


The USS Helsingør

by geode



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, Fluff, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, I LOVE LOVE!!, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, hamlet has a bad time but a supportive bf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-08-25 17:56:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16665502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geode/pseuds/geode
Summary: Horatio was only supposed to be passing through.(it's... Hamlet in space)





	1. week one

**Author's Note:**

> This was simultaneously a huge indulgence and a challenge to myself to try various things I haven't done much of, and then it just kept getting longer and I realised it'd gotten out of hand.
> 
> All mistakes are born of not consulting the Star Trek Bible, but in my defence I don't think they could've anticipated this.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hamlet had been told he's a high-ranking scholar on Vektar and a member of the council's circle, all the more impressive because he's Terran. He is said to be on the hunt for some rare documents across the Quadrant, which sounded a bit below his paygrade but who is Hamlet to judge? Just look at him right now.

Hamlet had always wanted to give someone a tour of a high school canteen – you know the one: gesturing to the various cliques sitting neatly at separate tables as they're doing something stereotypical; indicating who to avoid and who is socially acceptable to be seen with; maybe answering a horny "who's _that_?" or two – and all things considered, Starfleet ships are fairly frequently exactly like high school, so he's pretty stoked when the new guy shows up.

 

Apparently he'll be tagging along for three months from Vektar to Blackdog, seemingly on a professional whim. It had caused quite a stir among the crew because it been so long since there'd been a fresh face (or as Fort said, "fresh meat"). Quite a few people had volunteered to take him as their shadow, but Hamlet won under the premise that he was the highest-ranking officer who had nothing better to do.

 

Incidentally, his broken arm in its stiff blue cast is no good for gesturing to cliques, but he's trying to stay positive.

 

✧

 

They meet outside commons 4, which Hamlet had insisted upon because he had always thought it rather rude to dive into greetings the second the person transports aboard a ship. (Give them a second to collect themselves at least.) He leans against the wall of the corridor and starts to hum as he watches people go past in varying degrees of urgency. 

 

He's got some opera in his head he can't place. In a moment of uncharacteristic inspiration, he flicks the purple switch a few feet along the wall. "Computer, identify this song." Several ensigns pass by during his rendition with rock-hard expressions that are too blank to not be hiding something else, but Hamlet just waves to them cheerily because of all the reputations, mad isn't the worst of them.

 

"Symphony Errata by T'sar, composed 22nd Century."

 

" _Vulcan_ opera?" Hamlet exclaims. "I didn't know they had it. I wonder where on Earth I heard it."

 

"T'sar has not been introduced to Earth," the computer replies like a smart-ass.

 

Hamlet rolls his eyes. "Well that's a shame. I'll have to remedy that someday."

 

He realises a couple of people nearby are staring at him, so he clears his throat, says, "Thank you, computer," because manners maketh spaceman, and resumes his leaning on the wall.

 

The two people don't move on; by the time they've started coming towards him, Hamlet realises with horror they must be the new guest and his envoy. 

 

"Doctor?" he greets the older one in assumption, which of course turns out to be wrong within nanoseconds because the guy is in Starfleet civs. He turns to the other and tries not to look surprised at how young he is. Lots of the crew are young, he reminds himself: the Academy is particularly appealing to child prodigies. _Hamlet’s_ pretty damn young.

 

"Horatio," he introduces himself.

 

"Wonderful to meet you," Hamlet says, which after the fact he realises sounds incredibly sarcastic and is probably why when the Doctor – Horatio – forces a smile, it's more like a grimace.

 

The envoy nods once and dismisses himself. Hamlet watches him go with a suddenly sinking heart, already regretting agreeing to this. This Horatio is friends with the Captain – what if he's horribly boring and up himself?

 

"How do you like the Helsingør?" he asks as he indicates Horatio to go first into the commons.

 

"It's much bigger than I expected," he replies. "I don't have much experience with starships."

 

"Exploration vessels usually are about this size, to stave off the cabin fever."

 

"I hadn't considered it."

 

He's very formal, even for an academic. Hamlet had been told he's a high-ranking scholar on Vektar and a member of the council's circle, all the more impressive because he's Terran. He is said to be on the hunt for some rare documents across the Quadrant, which sounded a bit below his paygrade but who is Hamlet to judge? Just look at him right now.

 

"Your mission is three years, yes?" Horatio is asking.

 

"One year five months now," Hamlet nods, and then smiles. "We're just getting to the interesting part."

 

Commons 4 is relatively empty, to his disappointment. He'll save his Teen Movie routine for one of the upper decks.

 

"This deck is mainly recreation and quarters, but there are hangars on the starboard side, of course. These are the commons nearest your room. Replicator, bar, social entertainments." They back out again and start along the eastbound corridor. "Library, also used for quiet commons. Over there's the Science Garden, very nice but under decontamination at the moment. I'm sure you can go in later if you like; sometimes I eat in there to get away from everyone."

 

Horatio takes all this in quietly. Hamlet would think it's mere polite disinterest but something about his eyes makes him seem alert, anxious for knowledge, to know what's going on. Maybe he's just tired and it's making him jumpy.

 

"Did you want to see your room on the way?" Hamlet suggests. He’s holding a small carry-on so it could go either way whether he's already unpacked.

 

Horatio nods agreeably, so Hamlet takes him down to where the guest quarters are located. They're quite a lot nicer than standard, which the crew all resent, as they do all of Polonius' decisions, but this one gets special recognition resentment because it was his inaugural mistake. There are only two other guests onboard, so Hamlet taps the pad next to the third suite door and waves Horatio to the threshold, which scans him and locks in his ID.

 

“Crew gets fingerprint scanners but we can’t keep guests’ prints on record so it’s the door, I’m afraid. You can set them up for other people if you like, I can show you later.”

 

He seems pleased with the decor, perhaps also surprised by the size. Guests get double beds too. Score.

 

He places his meagre bag on the little table and turns in a circle to assess it all. Then he turns to Hamlet and smiles warmly.

 

"This is lovely. Thank you."

 

Hamlet shrugs. "I can... we can resume the tour later if you'd like? No one talks about how draining dissolving into atoms and reforming instantaneously can be."

 

Horatio smiles again but brushes it off. "I like to get my bearings."

 

"Of course. Shall we?" He hadn't really anticipated that he'd have to be polite to the new guy; he's spent so long on the bridge that even having runners unironically call him 'sir' is weird. Horatio shouldn't get used to it if he knows what's good for him.

 

They take a lift to the deck above and Hamlet shows him the various gyms, and then the medbay. Fort is in, so Hamlet gets in a little heckling, which Fort gets him back for by dramatically returning a bookchip Hamlet had left in one of the drawers.

 

"Sci fi?" Fort mocks him. "Didn't know you were twelve. Oh wait, I _did_."

 

Hamlet makes a face at him, forgetting for a second he's meant to be an officer – no, not meant to be, he fucking _is_. He tucks the chip into his pocket and ushers Horatio out, babbling, "Sorry about that, the good doctor and I have spent too much time together of late." He raises his cast to illustrate his point, although perhaps it comes across that Fort had been doing the breaking of the arm rather than the fixing, because Horatio looks alarmed. "He's an excellent physician," Hamlet insists. "But don't be afraid to tell him to shut up."

 

"I'll keep it in mind," Horatio says. "So, er... sci fi?"

 

Hamlet can feel the heat rising to his cheeks. Reading sci fi – or god forbid, _watching_ sci fi – was these days so unfashionable it had become embarrassing, and was Hamlet's most guilty secret. It’s considered at best nonsense kids’ fantasy, and at worst just straight up garbage pulled from where the suns don’t shine. Most sci fi authors used pseudonyms so they wouldn’t taint their careers. Most readers read it in secret, like they’re having an affair behind literary fiction’s back.

 

But Hamlet loves it. Most of it’s complete trash, of course, just gibberish from decades before scientific advancement even began. In honesty, the inaccuracy is what makes it so interesting to him. People _genuinely thought_ these things at some point: even the stuff written just a hundred years ago was so off-base it’s amazing. The world, and then the universe, moved so fast it rendered science from within a lifetime obsolete. Hamlet’s always been a nerd for science, and sci fi sort of acts as a showcase to (mostly human) stupidity and ever-learning.  It’s just unbounded, self-indulgent creativity.

 

He'd written his very first thesis on early science fiction, and the special interest had never quite left him. Which would've been fine if he hadn't started reading all his old favourites during his deathly boring days in the medbay to cheer himself up.

 

Hamlet didn't know quite how to relay all that concisely to Horatio. In the end he just shrugs. "It was a very extended stay."

 

Horatio pauses. "May I ask what happened?"

 

He'd expected it sooner or later; the envoy or the Captain or _someone_ surely would have told him Hamlet's job, and by all logic he should be doing it right now. Plus: his appearance.

 

Hamlet sighs, and then smiles in the way he’d practised. "Landing party gone wrong," he says. "Crashed on a moon trying to navigate through an ice ring."

 

"Oh."

 

"Thirty seconds ended in three weeks in Intensive. Very messy breaks in two limbs, some ribs cracked, lung complications, one hell of a concussion. I got off easy though." He resolutely doesn’t think about Mason.

 

Luckily, Horatio doesn't ask what he means by that and they continue walking towards the elevator.

 

"And they can't really drop me off anywhere to recuperate without leaving me behind," he tries to steer back into lighter territory. "So here I am, mid-mission, useless." (It doesn’t exactly work.)

 

"I appreciate your help," Horatio says, as if to reassure him. It's rather sweet, and it's in this particular moment that Hamlet realises he likes the guy.

 

He waves him off. "It's my pleasure, Doctor."

 

✧

 

"Over there's the science officers," Hamlet starts off, newly-abuzz with being able to tick this off his  teenage bucket-list. Finally, _finally_ , they'd reached an adequate commons, and Hamlet was practically vibrating with excitement. It's every underdog's dream!

 

He thinks Horatio has noticed and is humouring him with the right questions.

 

"Why aren't they talking to each other?"

 

"Oh, they are – their pads are connected by a localised network, so they can all be reading the same paper and discussing it right there. Like, um, letters. Texts." Horatio hums, impressed. "They tend to keep to themselves. They feel underutilized."

 

This, Horatio finds amusing for some reason. He's a lot more relaxed than he was even a quarter of an hour ago, and they're both starting to enjoy themselves.

 

Hamlet continues, "Then Security. They feel overutilized." Horatio laughs. "You can always find a swarm of them in the gyms. Always good to have in your corner. Good at cards, too." _The Jocks_. A couple of them are even arm wrestling as he speaks, which Hamlet is pleased about.

 

He nods towards the far corner and lowers his voice dramatically. "That's the group, if any, it's worth avoiding. They're the Seevies, only here as a means to an end, the end being military ships mainly. They think they're better than the rest of us, the ones here for exploration and experience. They're just using this mission to climb some other ladder. Not very friendly, either."

 

Horatio hums again, this time unimpressed. Three of the Seevies are laughing together, and it raises Hamlet's proverbial Ganglia instinctively. They remind him all too much of the Academy sometimes.

 

The next table holds some shy crewmembers; the next, a crowd of gossiping mini-Polonii; the next, in the centre of the room, is a lone Claudius eating stew.

 

"Who's that?" Horatio asks, and Hamlet let's himself tick that off his bingo even though it was decidedly _not_  a question borne of sexual interest.

 

"That's Claudius, the new Chief Engineer. Bit of a bastard if you ask me, which in the eyes and ears of the Captain you didn't. Hasn't made much effort to make friends, which he should've, considering."

 

"Considering?"

 

Hamlet curses himself for saying that last part out loud, because now he has to talk about it. He wonders if this is the first time he's mentioned it to an outsider.

 

"Our old Chief died suddenly two months ago," he explains. "He was a really good guy, everyone loved him. So Claudius makes for a cheap imitation."

 

Horatio makes a sympathetic face but seems to be waiting, like he can tell there's more to it. When it's obvious Hamlet is unwilling to explain further, he says tentatively, "I'll keep out of his way then."

 

"Do." Hamlet agrees. He realises they've been staring at him and swivels himself around to the final corner of the room, although the mood has sort of left him. "They're. They're the junior officers. Very excitable. We're too slow for them, I think. Definitely too into naps."

 

Horatio touches his arm and startles him; he still looks sympathetic. "Shall we do the rest later?"

 

Hamlet sighs. "No, it's okay. Really. It's just the top deck left now, then I can leave you with the Captain."

 

✧

 

The moment they arrive on the bridge he immediately feels better. He really fucking misses work at this point – it had been nice to get away from everything for a while, but now he's just waiting for his damn concussion to get the clear, and his arm to slow-heal. Otherwise he's raring to go, and really, _really_ bored.

 

"Here's where all the cool people are," he whispers to Horatio, and Horatio has to stifle a laugh because the Captain has turned in her seat and is greeting him.

 

"Horatio!" she exclaims as she stands. It's the warmest he's ever heard her, and Hamlet is struck by the idea that this is probably what she's always like in her downtime: they just never get to see. Hamlet steps back as they go to shake hands. "How _are_ you? Good journey? Hamlet been treating you well?"

 

"Life, the transporters _and_ your Helmsman have been treating me very well, Gertrude," he laughs, instantly seeming more relaxed. This kind of depresses Hamlet, because he thought he'd been doing a good job.

 

"Excellent! My, it's good to see you. How long has it been?"

 

Hamlet leaves them to it and drifts over to Rosencrantz's corner. He's talking to someone through his earpiece (one of the Klingon languages?) and signs for Hamlet to piss off, but of course he doesn't and peers into the screens faux-pensively. He pretends to reach for a button and hears Rosencrantz speed up his talking rapidly as he bats him away, and by Hamlet’s third attempt he's hung up and is rolling his chair around to block Hamlet out, saying, "I have not missed you _one_ bit." Which means he had.

 

Hamlet smiles sweetly back and leans on the controls.

 

"Don't _sit_ there!" Rosencrantz hisses.

 

"What harm can it do, it's only Comms," Hamlet replies, and dodges the subsequent hit.

 

"Is that what’s-his-name? Napoleon?" he asks under his breath.

 

"Horatio, yeah."

 

"He nice?"

 

"He is, actually."

 

"Good. I'd hate to hate him. Too busy already on that front," he drawls, aiming a glare at Hamlet.

 

"C'mon, drop the act. For my ego. I bet you're bored too."

 

Rosencrantz pauses, then concedes, "It's been a little duller. But there have been fewer stupid mistakes."

 

"Oh, I doubt that," Hamlet scoffs. He raises his voice and calls over to the Helm, "You remember to take the handbrake off, Guil?"

 

Guildenstern calls back without looking up, "Piss off, Hamlet."

 

"Yes, piss off, Hamlet."

 

He pouts. "What am I gonna do then? Law of the excluded middle; where am I meant to piss?"

 

Gertrude calls him over before either of them can start comprehending what that even means.

 

"Thank you for looking after him," she says, and Horatio looks embarrassed at that, because it's like he's her child. Which, with their ages, he probably could be, but for the species difference.

 

"It was good to have something to do," Hamlet answers pointedly.

 

"Ah, yes. Well, you'll be back within a fortnight so keep your hopes up." He rather likes her when she's in a good mood. "Now, unless there's something else you wanted to do you're dismissed." Never mind.

 

He tries not to take it personally.

 

"I could introduce the Doctor to the bridge crew?" he suggests feebly.

 

"Oh, don't worry, I'll take care of that. You go and rest."

 

 _I've spent a month resting,_ he doesn't say.

 

"Thank you, sir," he says instead, and turns. "I'll see you at dinner, Guil."

 

Then he trudges back to the elevator and goes to lie down, intending to spitefully read the bookchip from the medbay for the rest of the afternoon like anyone would know.


	2. week two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “He’s cool,” Guil agrees, before wincing at her own words. “I mean, he’s vastly uncool but he’s alright. I like him.”

Horatio turns out to be pretty fun when he puts his mind to it. Mind you, he doesn't put his mind to it often enough.

 

He spends the majority of his time either in his quarters, or in the library down the corridor from his quarters, or with the Captain in her downtime. He likes to read of course, and writes frantically for several hours a day, but he keeps to himself, which Hamlet finds a great shame. He weirdly finds himself wishing he could give him another tour, have some other obligation forcing them together. If he did another one now, he’d tell him all the good stuff, like which faulty replicators you can manipulate and the best places if you need to power-cry on duty.

 

They'd been eating together most nights, but in a group setting, which didn't make for good meaningful conversation; having to talk over Fortinbras and Guildenstern arguing is never easy, or recommended. Hamlet mainly makes reactionary faces across the table at him depending on what’s going on, and Horatio chokes on his soup in reply. It’s cute, and he’s just enjoying having someone new to use all his shit jokes on again, but yeah: he keeps to himself.

 

Everyone likes him though.

 

“Must say,” Guil muses one day after Horatio has excused himself before dessert, “I thought he’d be super boring, being the Captain’s friend and all.”

 

“Give her some credit,” Ros interjects, but Hamlet’s nodding.

 

“And by all rights he _should_ be! He’s like a, galactic librarian or something. He has a damn robe! And yet…”

 

“He’s cool,” Guil agrees, before wincing at her own words. “I mean, he’s vastly uncool but he’s alright. I like him.”

 

“I appreciate that he’s quiet,” Ros agrees while pointedly looking at Fort, who flips him off. “And that when he _does_ say something, it’s worthwhile.” Here he turns his withering look to Guil. She smiles sweetly.

 

“He’s your perfect guy.” Hamlet points at him with his spoon.

 

Ros shrugs. “He’s the least offensive company I’ve had in a while.”

 

“I knew you missed having me around,” Hamlet croons.

 

“I will never admit that.”

 

Later that night Guildenstern bullies Hamlet into knocking on Horatio’s door to ask if he wanted to join them for a loosely-named jam on one of the Viewdecks.

 

Horatio looks past Hamlet in the doorway at Ros with his stupid banjtar and Fort’s pipes slung over his shoulder; Guil waves her little beanbag at him cheerfully.

 

“I promise they’ll stop playing in under ten minutes when they get distracted,” Hamlet swears.

 

“Hey! We’re good.”

 

“When has anyone good ever said that?”

 

“I’m sure you’re all great,” Horatio diffuses, which gets him a triumphant shake of the beanbag. “But I’m quite busy at the moment, I’m sorry.”

 

When Fort starts to protest, Hamlet flaps at him and insists to Horatio that it’s no problem, some other time perhaps, good luck with all his things, see him as breakfast.

 

As he’s turning to go, Horatio coughs and says suddenly, “What’s your forte then?”

 

“Hm?” Hamlet asks. Horatio’s still holding his pen, but he’s tapping it up and down on his paper, like a nervous tick. Hamlet likes these moments when he’s not being a fancy academic and is instead a dweeb like the rest of them: if Hamlet had a pen in all social situations, he’d tap it too.

 

“Your instrument,” Horatio clarifies, and Guildenstern snorts. Horatio goes pink and Hamlet makes a note to reprimand her later.

 

Hamlet reaches into his belt loop at the small of his back and brings out his qe’nvar.

 

Horatio makes a little ‘oh!’ of admiration. “I haven’t seen one of those since I was a child! But how does it work within a ship’s forcefield?”

 

“It barely does,” Hamlet admits. “It’s just an excuse for jamming, and jamming’s just an excuse for bitching. I mean, uh. Um.”

 

“Chatting shit?” Ros offers.

 

Hamlet’s making a second note to change it into a group reprimand, but sees Horatio grinning.

 

“For the billionth time this week, I apologise for my colleagues,” Hamlet says, but this time he’s grinning too. He’s still getting used to the idea that ‘Captain’s friend’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘will report back all instances of being a twat to their friend the Captain’.

 

“You guys are nothing like the people I work with,” Horatio says.

 

“I wouldn’t really call exploration working,” Ros points out.

 

“Our office is the stars, our water cooler the Neutral Zone,” Guil sighs dreamily.

 

Fortinbras rolls his eyes and sharply blows into one of his pipes to startle her into stopping talking.

 

Horatio is still smiling at them. He’s stopped frantically tapping his pen.

 

“I’d love to join you some other time,” he says. “And I mean that. I can’t play anything but I can cheer you on.”

 

“You’re promoted to Number One Groupie!” Guildenstern dubs him immediately, which about sums up how popular they are on the ship.

 

“Whose toes would that be stepping on?”

 

“Ophelia’s, but she’s graphically described exactly how she’s planning to break each of our instruments multiple times, so I think the position is safely yours.”

 

“Mine’s out the airlock!” Guildenstern tells him excitedly over Hamlet’s shoulder as he herds them from the room.

 

“ _You’re_ out the airlock,” Hamlet hisses. “Do you not remember how to make friends?”

 

“Never learnt,” she replies, and when Hamlet turns a last time to wave, Horatio’s watching them go, still grinning.

 

✧

 

Shoreleave is really the only time he can pry Horatio from his books, as he finds out when they stop off at a neutral planet a few days into Horatio's stay. Hamlet decides it's the perfect opportunity to talk to him again; he doesn't want to like, annoy him, so he'd been keeping his distance – but he's starting to think Horatio is merely reserved, and isn't avoiding _him_ so much as everyone.

 

He's curious about the guy, if he's honest. There's something in his eyes, under the surface, something he can't put his finger on, but it thoroughly intrigued him. He's the first mystery around in a long while.

 

They had beamed down a half hour ago, completed safety checks for a two mile radius, and the Captain had just left Horatio's side to track down Fort, so Hamlet pounces.

 

"Fancy a stroll, Doctor?”

 

Horatio smiles widely when he sees him, and Hamlet realises he’d been… anxious. There had been little else to occupy his mind so he’d been mulling him over, much like he used to at the Academy after lectures, wondering if he should invite his classmates for a drink. He’s due back to work any day now, so time is of the essence: if Hamlet made no move before he became horribly busy again, it would never happen, and perhaps the one chance at a new friendship this mission would be over before it could start.

 

"Of course!" Horatio replies, and Hamlet grins back, heartrate falling back to an appropriate tempo. For a person of considerable accomplishment, he really is a disaster. He barrels ahead so he doesn’t have to dwell of that.

 

"It’s nice here. Peaceful. I think you'll like your first shoreleave." Horatio seems pleasantly embarrassed by the idea of Hamlet thinking of him, which is just the reaction he'd hoped for: maybe he's not so bad at this. He continues, “Some passengers get surprise flesh-eating bacteria planets as their first and refuse to step foot on land again, so let’s hope this isn’t that.” From Horatio’s expression, it becomes clear he _is_ so bad this, so he shuts his trap.

 

They walk in silence together for a while, listening to the strange braying of some woodland creature they hadn’t stumbled across yet. They’re in a sort of forest, but the trees aren't anything Hamlet had seen before. The sky is a pale orange, and he registers that it’s pretty beautiful; somewhere you'd go on a first date, or a fiftieth. A little cold, but that's where the jacket-around-their-shoulders move comes in.

 

"I'm sorry we haven't had much time to talk," Horatio says suddenly. 

 

Hamlet is taken aback, but more than a little pleased, but also amused because they’ve had nothing _but_ time. (It's a goddamn rollercoaster.)

 

"Oh, don't worry about it. How's the book going?" This could mean either the one he's currently reading or the one he's allegedly writing, and Hamlet's open to either conversation.

 

"Slowly," Horatio replies, which Hamlet deduces to mean the one he's writing.

 

"Did you bring it down?"

 

Horatio flushes, and after a pause says, "Yes. I don't like to leave it anywhere, really."

 

"Never know when you'll be hit with inspiration," Hamlet nods sagely.

 

"You must think I'm an awful bore, sorry."

 

"Why on Earth would I think that?"

 

This makes Horatio laugh, and it takes Hamlet a second to realise why and remember that, oh: _no one fucking talks like this._

 

He'd started it as a joke with Ophelia because Laertes couldn't stand Ye Olde Terranisms, calling everyone ragamuffins and cads, saying everything was groovy, weird English idioms about taverns, that kind of thing. It drove him up the wall. (Ha!) Ophelia had stopped indulging him by her first assignment, but Hamlet couldn't seem to shake it. The bridge guys are used to his shit by now and just ignore him, which actually ended up with probably the opposite to the intended effect because he forgets he’s doing it half the time. Plus, he immensely enjoyed the confusion on people's faces when he told them he was "popping" to engineering.

 

Is it obvious he was a literature student?

 

Hamlet grins back at him, and the guy seems to relax.

 

"You _don't_ think I’m boring?" Horatio asks in disbelief. "Everyone's always telling me I have a co-dependency problem with my work."

 

"That's no bad thing. That's just a good work ethic, if anything."

 

Horatio hums and Hamlet sneaks a glance at him. He's watching his footing on the rocky terrain like Hamlet, but he's smiling at his feet now, and his shoulders are visibly looser than he'd seen in the past week. Hamlet gets that. Introverted people prefer one-on-one, which bodes well for Hamlet.

 

"Can I ask what it's about?" he asks for the hell of it. He doesn't expect anything more than a cheery obfuscation, so it surprises him no end when Horatio replies like he’d asked him the time.

 

"Jail Town." Horatio also seems surprised, and stops dead in his tracks, eyes darting around like they had done that first day. "Fuck."

 

"Was that, uh, a trade secret?"

 

Horatio shakes his head frantically but says, "Yes, yes it was. Shit."

 

"Don't… don’t worry, man," Hamlet waves it off. Honestly, he wouldn’t have thought anything of it if he hadn’t sworn, because Horatio doesn’t seem the type: just yesterday he’d hissed ‘sugar’ when he’d hit his knee on the commons table corner. But clearly Horatio is more shocked than him – he seems to be _panicking_ – and his overwhelming instinct is to reassure him, as his host. "Seriously, I heard nothing, and I don't know what that is anyway. And I doubt this uninhabited planet is bugged."

 

This doesn't appear to do much to calm him.

 

"I'm sorry," he babbles. They've ground to a halt in an especially thickly-wooded area, and when Horatio steps backwards he stumbles on several fallen branches.

 

"Really and truly, _don't worry_ ," Hamlet tells him firmly. He almost reaches out to touch his arm but remembers himself before he does.

 

"I think perhaps... I should go and find the Captain," Horatio says, almost to himself.

 

Hamlet steps back too, and they're suddenly very far apart.

 

"If you like, of course," he agrees professionally.

 

Horatio finally looks up and Hamlet tries not to jump at his expression. _Wow, it really must be a secret._

 

"I'm sorry," he repeats. "This was... really nice."

 

"It's no problem," Hamlet says. He's at a loss now. He supposes he's failed at trying to be friends with the Doctor.

 

_Great going, you nosy bastard_.

 

Horatio veers off to the west and disappears into the trees, headed the direction the Captain had before.

 

Hamlet stands there for a minute or so trying to think of where he's heard the name Jail Town before, and then his communicator bleeps and it calls for all personnel to return to the ship immediately.


	3. week three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Horatio shivers when his breath hits his temple.

They don't talk about it again, which Hamlet wasn't expecting because it had seemed to be kind of a big deal, but Horatio doesn't disappear entirely, which he _had_ been expecting frankly. It’s what Hamlet usually does at the first sign of social blunder. Instead, Horatio seems to make quite an effort to spend time with him after that, and he has the faint, hopeful idea that it's to reassure him they're still friends. (Or to distract him from some galactic mob business, but a boy can dream.)

 

They get on really well, so well in fact that Hamlet starts to neglect the others. They continue having dinner together, but start eating in the Science Garden or at strange times of day so as to avoid everyone; Guildenstern messages him several times asking him where's he's got to and Hamlet pulls the recovery card. He learns that Horatio likes movies, and they go to the midday showings a few times in the all-but-abandoned cinema on Deck 3 where the seats rattle even when there's no action onscreen. They spend a lot of time walking laps around the ship, Horatio so he's not sitting down writing all day, and Hamlet because Fort had ordered him to do exercise and any other kind is horrifying.

 

To his great annoyance, he starts developing a bit of a crush.

 

It sneaks up on him, but not really because he's a scientist: he lives by the rule of three, so when it happens to him he can't feasibly ignore it.

 

The first time is on one of their walks. They've given up on pretending it’s a jog, or even a brisk stroll; they've been curving around portside for half an hour now – which beats Hamlet's personal anti-record – looking out at the stars and occasional planet. Horatio’s gotten talking about the Vektar Archivists and Hamlet is letting him roam free in the conversation, happy to listen to whatever the hell he’s talking about. The ship is approaching a class-PV and its red, misty mass is looming out in the darkness. Horatio stops mid-sentence to stare at it through the porthole, classically starstruck. It’s going on a month into his visit now but he still seems shocked and delighted by everything.

 

"You really haven't seen many drive-bys, have you?" Hamlet grins.

 

Horatio, not looking away from the vast red planet, murmurs, "Not much of a traveller."

 

And it’s something about his voice, the awe, the weakness, that makes Hamlet swallow and follow his gaze, stepping closer to him to share the view. It really is beautiful, and Hamlet wonders how many times he's missed a view like this simply because he's too used to it. He leans in and steadies himself with a light hand on Horatio's shoulder, and they both hold their breath, for their own separate reasons no doubt.

 

The second time is in commons, on a now-rare occasion where they're eating with the whole gang. (Minus Ophelia: someone's got to babysit the relief bridge crew, and she likes to multi-task things with avoiding her brother.) Laertes had scooted over from the Security table specifically to yell at Rosencrantz in Bajoran for the millionth time about how he needs to learn how to fight in case the pen breaks in the face of the sword, yada yada. Hamlet relays this to a bewildered Horatio across the table, using that exact pretentious phrasing, and Horatio fucking grins over at him through all the noise, quiet as a secret, and Hamlet beams back and doesn't look away for a long few seconds. He realises two and a half hours later when he’s still thinking about it that he might have a problem on his hands.

 

The third time is weird, because he's aware it's happening as it's happening.

 

They're in the library. In the spirit of uprooting routine, Hamlet persuades Horatio to go to a different library for once. This one’s the second biggest on the ship, running the size of about one commons plus six quarters, and the stacks are crammed together like they are in the Academy, too much knowledge for so little space. Horatio is enthralled, and Hamlet's embarrassingly content with following him around like a puppy as he weaves through the tall shelves, running a finger down the walls of bookchips, sometimes taking one out and turning it to read the descriptor. It’s deliciously quiet, and even more so this far back into the stacks. It feels like they’re completely alone, which thrills Hamlet a bit, not least because Horatio is in his element like this and it’s endearing to watch him bumble about.

 

So they're mooching, a small pile of chips in Horatio's hand, when two young crewmembers burst into their aisle, making out like their lives depend on it. Horatio doesn't notice for a few moments, when the girl bumps backwards into one of the stacks with a significant thud in the silence. The two break away from each other and start laughing, the girl's face buried in the guy's neck. Hamlet feels Horatio stiffen beside him, a rabbit in headlights. They haven't seen them yet. Hamlet glances at Horatio and makes a gesture that he hopes conveys 'let's go around the corner', and it seems to because Horatio nods curtly and starts to back up. The girl pulls out of her boyfriend's neck and smirks up at him, and then slips her hands up beneath the hem of his uniform shirt.

 

A sharp clatter makes the two of them whip around, and they see Horatio hastily picking up his dropped bookchips and Hamlet hovering awkwardly beside him. Hamlet mouths 'sorry' over at them, and luckily they don't seem conclude they’re being spied on (not everyone shares Hamlet's inherent paranoia). The guy waves them off easily and, when Horatio stands, accidentally closer than before, and than anticipated, the guy winks at Hamlet. The crewmembers slip around the corner of the stack and out of sight, and Hamlet relinquishes his gaze to meet Horatio's eyes. He still looks slightly scandalised, eyes big, hair a little askew from bending down too quickly. He's close enough that Hamlet can feel his breath on his skin. Hamlet's pulse rises into his throat in the sudden ringing quiet and proximity. Horatio blinks at him, still pink.

 

And then they both burst out laughing, hands at their mouths in vain to stop the noise carrying, leaning into each other in hysteria. Hamlet finds his ducked head mirroring the girl's, near Horatio's neck, forehead grazing his skin.

 

Lieutenant Shacklebolt appears at the end of the stack with a furious look on her face, shushing them violently. Hamlet realises suddenly how this must look, how from the sounds she probably thinks it had been _them_ doing the making out. It's as hilarious as it is hot, which is Hamlet's favourite middle-ground between anything. Shacklebolt disappears as quickly as she appeared, presumably back to her desk so she can resign finally after years of volunteering to run the libraries and only getting disruptive horny kids in return.

 

Horatio is still giggling under his breath, head in his hands. Hamlet takes his hand from his face and leans in to whisper in his ear, "You're the first person who's ever come to the Astropsych section _not_ to make out."

 

Horatio shivers when his breath hits his temple.

 

✧

 

"Guil, Guilly, I need you."

 

"I'm busy."

 

"It's an emergency."

 

"Everything with you is an emergency. Also, everything I do is technically to combat emergencies – it's my job."

 

" _Guil._ "

 

She finally looks up and surveys his doubtless desperate expression. "I'll give you one final chance to decide whether this is worth me leaving the bridge, consequences on you, of course."

 

"Say I kidnapped you. I'm not on duty so I can't be suspended."

 

"That's not really how it works," Guildenstern says, but stands. "Acker, you have the helm. I have a file for Claudius anyway – walk with me."

 

They step into the elevator and the moment the doors close Hamlet hisses, _"I have a heart problem."_

 

Guil balks. "What, like angina?"

 

"What? No. Like, heart stuff. Feelings."

 

"You're having feelings?"

 

"Yes, and I don't appreciate them."

 

She sighs and starts spinning the file in her hand like a windmill. "Expand," she demands.

 

Hamlet fidgets for a moment. "What are the rules these days concerning onboard relationships?"

 

"Uh, I think mostly they're fine unless it hinders your work, or they're a direct superior officer."

 

"What about... non-crewmembers?"

 

She stops spinning her file and turns to face him rather than the doors. "Hamlet, are you talking about Fort's Purja Snails?"

 

"Oh, Jesus Christ."

 

"Because if this is just out of boredom I can order an assess–"

 

_"I don't want to fuck snails!"_ he hisses, and is truly amazed that the doors don't open right at that second like the laws of his personal universe should have ordered.

 

"What are you talking about then?"

 

" _Passengers_ , Guil," he answers in exasperation, and Guildenstern's eyes grow so wide so quickly he's genuinely worried she might be having some kind of delayed allergic reaction.

 

The doors do open then, and three people get on, one carrying a large silver box that appears to be hot to the touch if his hot-potato act is anything to go by. Guil ends up at the opposite side of the elevator as the doors close again.

 

_Horatio?_ she mouths across at him. They're conveniently taller than everyone else present – well, conveniently for Guil. Hamlet had been hoping to get a moment of self-collection before her verdict.

 

He nods, and she makes an excited face back like a living emoji. _That's so cute!_  

 

Hamlet rolls his eyes. She waits for him to finish and then adds, _Get him flowers._

 

_Where am I meant to find flowers in deep space?_

 

_Science Garden._

 

_Only has herbs at the moment. Porter’s on a chive kick._

 

_Put in a request._

 

_Is it okay though? Am I allowed?_

 

_Don't see why not. He's the Captain's friend, so rules probably don't apply to him._

 

_So there ARE rules?_

 

She shrugs.

 

The doors open and two of the others get off, including hot-potato guy. Guil is clearly buzzing to continue their conversation but rightly thinks it would be too weird to mouth it over a single person. Instead, after a few moments of just the gentle whirring of the mechanisms, she muses, "They should really install some music in here."

 

The third-wheel smiles in agreement. "Maybe some mellow Earth Classical," she suggests.

 

"I was thinking Vulcan Opera," Hamlet says as sincerely as he can. 

 

Third-Wheel smiles awkwardly at him, the way people do when they're being polite to people they think are nuts. "I didn't know they had opera on Vulcan."

 

Guildenstern makes a face at him.

 

The ensign gets out on the next deck, and Hamlet will never know whether it was her destination or his overwhelmingly unsettling presence that did it. 

 

Guil steps over to him and announces decisively, "I think you should do it."

 

"Ask him out?"

 

"Why not? If he says no it hardly matters. I heard you'll be back on the bridge within three days."

 

"People _keep_ saying that but Fort keeps refusing to clear me. He's not the best person to make an enemy of."

 

"Whatever, I don't care, just ask Horatio out. He obviously likes you."

 

This is news. Well, not news but... reassuring. "He does?"

 

"Yes, idiot. He's just bad at showing it."

 

It's plausible.

 

"I've only ever asked out one person," Hamlet admits. "I think I'm... pretty bad at it."

 

"You literally just have to say 'Would you like to go out sometime?', dude. Do you want me to write it down?"

 

Hamlet considers it for a second but shakes his head. "Alright. Okay, I'll do it."

 

"Good man!" Guil slaps him on the back with the file. "God, this ride is taking forever – is that a new development?”

 

"Ask Claudius about it," Hamlet replies as the doors open at last and Guilly steps out. She turns when Hamlet makes no move to follow.

 

"You not coming? We can discuss tactics on the way back?"

 

Hamlet shakes his head again. He'd love to waste another solid five minutes of her time catching her up on bulletin gossip, but he really doesn't want to see Claudius, and can't think of a non-strange way to lurk in the corridor while she delivers the file. "I'm just gonna head up again. Thanks though."

 

"Anytime, doofus," she replies, which makes Hamlet grin as the doors close between them. One day he'll have the whole ship speaking in his vernacular. It’ll be his first rule if he ever makes Captain.


	4. week four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “But you had a good first day?"
> 
> “Great first day,” Hamlet reassures him, truthfully. “Missed not annoying you, though.”

Hamlet gets cleared for duty again, and Horatio says yes to a date, and then another one, and life, for once, is very very easy.

 

It's bordering on sad how much Hamlet enjoys being back at work. _Man_ , he's missed flying; apart from reading it’s the only way he can feel the adrenaline of danger without Fort re-evaluating his psych results. Within an hour of being back on the bridge, he gets trigger-happy with the controls and almost zaps the ship into a timeloop, but there’s nothing like a brush with death to perk you up when the coffee machine’s malfunctioning.

 

Mostly he’d missed just physically being on the bridge, though. Nowhere else feels quite as much like home. That said, Horatio isn’t technically allowed on the bridge, and has shit to do besides, so it’s a little different, a little less like flying is the only thing he ever wants to be doing. Each has its own perks. It’s kind of reassuring, in a way. Shifts are like it was before, and then after dinner he’s thrown back into the now. He likes the idea that nothing has to change dramatically every time he does something. Like he said, life is easy. He'd just never believed it before.

 

But he’d forgotten a vital piece of information.

 

Now, Hamlet isn't a secretive person. He's pretty bad at lying, so he figured a long time ago he'd just make being honest and open a personality trait instead. This combined with the nature of the Helsingør, which was as much gossip- as engine-fuelled, means that word gets around impossibly fast. There had been a small window between Horatio agreeing to go on their first date and Hamlet starting back, and this had been fairly quiet, with only Guil sending him food emojis every evening to make his pad ping at romantically-charged moments – but he'd somehow fucking forgotten the sheer power of the bridge.

 

Rosencrantz guesses within an hour just from the way Guil and Hamlet are acting at the helm. Ophelia correctly deduces when Hamlet lends her a pen. Laertes makes an appearance and a bad joke and from Guil's reaction seems to catch onto something, and Ophelia drags him into the elevator by his collar. On his break, fucking _Polonius_ comes up to offer 'congrats' – not congratulations, congrats – and then the Captain is saying "Hamlet, a word" and Hamlet realises his cosmic, karmic, bullshit mistake.

 

"I hear you and Horatio have become quite close," she says coolly, and Hamlet honestly wants to die. Could she fire him? The answer is absolutely yes; he did two illegal things just that morning that she let slide. She also favours boldly going off grid when the situation calls for it, andbutso there's ample stock if she ever wanted rid of him. She lets him fly her ship, he lets her hold almost total power over his career. At the time is seemed like a fair deal. He really does love this ship.

 

Hamlet hums as neutrally as he can manage as the Captain presses the button for Deck 5. He runs through all the possibilities of ways she can kill him on Deck 5: there's a gym – she could just make him work out until he died, which would be almost immediately. She could stun him in the commons and everyone could throw fruit like in Medieval England.

 

"I'm glad you’re making his visit more enjoyable," she continues, just as coolly as before. Hamlet restrains himself from turning to gape at her in disbelief.

 

"It's... no bother?" he replies.

 

She nods, and doesn't look particularly murderous. Hamlet allows himself to start breathing again.

 

"I merely thought I would remind you that he is here for the duration of the journey to Blackdog and no longer."

 

Oh. Yeah.

 

It’s something they didn’t really talk about that first night, and Hamlet doesn’t know if they will anytime soon. Nothing sexier than planning your future together three hours into a relationship. Really it’s something Hamlet’s been not thinking about for a while; he’s gonna miss Horatio as a good friend at this point anyway, so it doesn’t bear thinking about. There aren’t many situations that have a real life sell-by date to them, and even reaching that could be being optimistic – part of Hamlet is reassured by the idea that he might fuck this up and then they both end up glad they won’t have to deal with each other for the next year in close quarters.

 

The point is, it’s a mess, and Hamlet knows intimately all the grisly ways in which it _is_ a mess.

 

"I'm aware, sir," he says, trying not to sound as defensive as he feels.

 

"Good."

 

The doors open at Deck 5 and they step off; Hamlet has no idea where they're going but knows enough to keep pace with the Captain as she sets off briskly down the starboard side.

 

"I don’t wish to pry," she continues, then adding less primly, "I _truly_ do not want to know about your personal life."

 

Hamlet huffs out a laugh and counts his lucky stars she seems to be in a good mood. God knows how this would have gone if she hadn't been – it’s an unprecedented situation.

 

"I’m only saying something, preemptively, because neither of your jobs is worth losing, should this all get out of control."

 

"If I fuck up, you mean?"

 

"If you fuck up," she agrees.

 

Hamlet grins over at her and she smiles back, with a hint of hard-earned warmth.

 

"You're not going to threaten to shoot me if I hurt him?" he says jovially, riding this wave of informality and personability he can only very occasionally eke out of her.

 

He fully expects her to disagree and list a few ways she has already planned to torture him if it comes to that, but instead she sighs, or as close to sighs as she comes. "Well, I feel it’s a little unfair when Chief's not here to do the same for you."

 

It blindsides him, somehow.

 

He wonders what he would say about this whole thing – probably something highly inappropriate and completely spot-on about how stupid Hamlet gets when he's absorbed in something, someone, someidea. He sees himself in his mind, punching him in the shoulder and saying dryly, "thanks, old man", and when the self in his mind breaks into a smile he has to push it down, shove it deep in a locked box, swallow hard.

 

"I'd like to think Guildenstern would step up," he says weakly. "Although she already likes Horatio more than me. Actually, everyone does. Hm, maybe Fort then – they haven't really met, so he can’t be leaning far either way, and his emotions cancel out on me so we’re neutral; plus he has lots of threatening needles at hand–"

 

"Hamlet," the Captain says.

 

"Sorry."

 

"He would be very happy for you."

 

Hamlet can't meet her eye and can tell she's trying to get him to.

 

They've stopped outside the gym after all, and just then a horde of Security shirts (although shirtless) bursts into the corridor before them.

 

"Well," the Captain says, a little louder due to the sudden swell of noise. "I'm glad we talked. You may return to the bridge."

 

"Aye, sir."

 

"Could you pick up the two new passenger briefs on your way back?"

 

"Aye, sir."

 

"And Hamlet," she parts with, and Hamlet does meet her eye because he won't have to deal with this in a moment. Her face is as blank as ever, except for the line of her brow that only straightens when she's tasked with something major. "I wish you the best."

 

"Thank you," he gets out. And bolts.

 

✧

 

Hamlet flings himself onto the couch in Horatio’s quarters with all the dramatic flair he can muster. Horatio sits back at his desk with pointed grace.

 

When he doesn’t ask, Hamlet lolls his head around, this time with panache, to meet his eyes; Horatio just looks back, a hint of a smile under his blank expression. After a few seconds of this, Hamlet pouts.

 

“C’mon, indulge me.”

 

Horatio breaks into a real smile; it’s like all his smiles so far, except there’s this new element in it that’s something very similar to fondness, and just seeing it makes Hamlet break his angle and smile back.

 

Horatio leans back in his chair. “Fortinbras, error or existentialism?”

 

Hamlet narrows his eyes and twists around on the couch to face him properly. “Are you trying to ‘animal, vegetable, mineral’ my day?”

 

“On Vektar it’s called ‘intelligent, organic, synthetic’, but yes.”

 

“Ours is catchier.”

 

“So which is it?”

 

Hamlet is feeling some of that fondness right back at him. He doesn’t want to ruin the moment, so he quickly amends his trajectory and picks from the number of things that went wrong today. “Uh, error? I guess?”

 

“Tech malfunction?”

 

“No.”

 

“So human error?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Yours?”

 

“Only sort of!”

 

“Was it about flying or general… things?”

 

“I thought I was only allowed to say yes or no.”

 

“Okay, was it flying-related?”

 

“No.”

 

“Hmm.” They both seem to realise at the same time that Horatio doesn’t know anything at all about Hamlet’s job outside of the actual piloting part. Hamlet lets him grasp at mental straws for a minute before giving in and laughing.

 

“Looks like I win that round,” he says triumphantly, like it had required any iota of effort on his part.

 

Horatio makes a face at him. “I think you’ll find _I_ won because _you_ didn’t get to monologue.”

 

“Don’t tempt me, I still might.”

 

“Are you blackmailing me into kissing you so you can’t talk?”

 

Hamlet grins. “It never crossed my mind.”

 

Horatio finally comes and sits next to him on the couch. True to his word, he kisses Hamlet softly. It’s still a new enough development that Hamlet feels all the clichés, the melting and the soaring and so on. Horatio pulls away way too soon to let him know, “You can monologue if you like. I’m sure it’s very well prepared.”

 

“You’re right,” Hamlet murmurs back. “It _is_ very well written, but I won’t subject you to it just yet.”

 

Horatio brushes their hands together. “But you had a good first day?"

 

“Great first day,” Hamlet reassures him, truthfully. “Missed not annoying you, though.”

 

“I missed your annoying.”

 

Hamlet kisses him again. Everything’s so damn easy with Horatio. He feels like they could just live on some tropical moon and stay in bed their whole lives, but unfortunately they won’t because they both have careers they love. But the thought’s there. Kissing him’s as easy as breathing. He doesn’t know if that’s a Horatio thing or a thing born of Hamlet taking Guildenstern’s advice and not caring, just doing what you want, nothing’s as deep as your brain makes you believe.

 

So in the combined spirits of ease and honesty, Hamlet decides to tell the truth and not care about it. “Actually, it was a little existential,” he admits in between kisses.

 

Horatio meets his eye, a hand on his chest. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs.

 

Hamlet shrugs. “Mainly the good kind. It’s… really nice to be back.” His words fall totally flat of what he means, but they also king of sum it up. It _is_ nice.

 

“Good.” Horatio says, and they don’t talk again for a while.


	5. week five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It starts out, as all batshit things on the Helsingør do, as an experiment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to @decayingliberty for the idea! hope you enjoy :D

On their two week anniversary, Hamlet gets Horatio the ancient courting ritual tribble. Ophelia finds a seller at a starbase and rightly assumes Hamlet will pay handsomely for a gift he's been stressing over for... one and a half weeks. It’s not exactly a creative solution, but it’s virtually impossible to hate cute fluffy things, and if Horatio just finds it funny he can always pretend it’s ironic.

 

With Guil’s help he replicates a gift topper that in the end he just has to hold above the creature because it’s definitively _not_ into having it stuck to its head. “Surprise!” Hamlet sings when Horatio enters his quarters that evening with an armful of bookchips. The tribble squawks at the sound and bumbles off towards Horatio, bumping into his feet and doing so continuously until Horatio picks it up, cooing.

 

“Oh, Hamlet, he’s adorable,” he murmurs. He glances up at him, eyes shiny. “You got him for me?”

 

“Uh, yeah? Anniversary present?”

 

“Who gives week anniversary presents?”

 

“Me, apparently. Don’t worry, I don’t expect anything from you. Except maybe a kiss,” he adds slyly.

 

Horatio comes over, tribble cuddled into his chest, and kisses him on the cheek before returning his loved-up gaze to the animal. Hamlet realises he might have an unforeseen jealousy problem arising.

 

✧

 

Horatio calls it Bernardo (reason unknown) and takes it with him everywhere. Well, that’s not exactly accurate. Hamlet _thought_ he took it everywhere in the beginning but it turns out Bernardo _follows_ Horatio. Twenty-four seven. He figures this out when he spies it over Horatio’s shoulder when they’re making out on one of the viewdecks – it isn’t watching them (did tribbles have eyes?) but it’s definitely there, and Hamlet feels like a bad parent and has to pull away.

 

This starts happening more frequently as the days go on, until one Wednesday morning he wakes up in Horatio’s bed to a tribble three inches from his face, purring softly, animated but not going anywhere. He engages it in a stare-off (seriously, do they have eyes?) for a solid thirty seconds, and then he realises that this tribble… is orange. Bernardo is a light grey. Ophelia would never pick an orange one.

 

“’Ratio,” Hamlet says sleepily, reaching across himself to poke Horatio awake.

 

“Mm?” came the uninterested reply.

 

“Did you dye Bernardo?”

 

“Bernardo’s _died_?” Horatio sits bolt upright and if it weren’t for his expression it would be hilarious. The orange tribble scuttles off to the right of the floor at the sudden movement. Hamlet sighs and sits up also.

 

“No, the… _homonym_ , dude – to dye something.”

 

“Don’t use homonyms this early in the morning,” Horatio exhales, honest to God hand on his chest. “So, what, you think I’ve… dyed my pet?”

 

“Well, have you?”

 

Horatio stares at him. “Should I be worried that you think I’d do that?”

 

“ _Look_ , just-“ and he swings his legs out of bed and scours the room with his eyes. “Look, there under the dresser.”

 

“Look at what, he’s- _what._ ”

 

“Right?! He’s ginger!”

 

Horatio coaxes the tribble out and cups it in his hand, stroking it gently. “This… isn’t my son,” he says.

 

“Who the hell else’s could it be?”

 

✧

 

He corners Ophelia the moment he gets to the bridge, morning tea in hand but otherwise immediately giving up on the pretence of being casual.

 

“You wouldn’t happen to know why there’s a second tribble running around the ship, would you?”

 

Ophelia plucks the cup from his hand in such a way that incites both protest and acceptance in Hamlet, but any attempts he could have made to actually protest are forgotten when she replies, “That’ll be Francisco.”

 

He splutters for a second as she blows on the tea.

 

“Okay, first of all, was there a meeting about mandatory shit names for pets that I missed? Second of all, _what_.”

 

“Save your rage for the accelerator pedal,” she says as she takes a sip. “It really isn’t hard to understand. You think I’d bother tracking down a single tribble for a gift?”

 

“You scammed me!”

 

“You, may I remind you, offered to pay.”

 

“Because I knew that’s what you were going for!”

 

She shrugs.  Rosencrantz and Acker enter the bridge and she calls out a sweet ‘good morning’.

 

“So what did you really do?” Hamlet sighs. He’s done a lot of sighing today already. It’s 0715.

 

“Trade. That seller wanted them all gone and there’s a buyer on Atria who’s already paid. People waste a lot of money on those things,” she shook her head.

 

“Is that legal, trading on company time?”

 

“I was on my lunch break. Morning, Guildenstern.”

 

“What’re we plotting?” Guil greets them, joining their little circle by the empty Captain’s chair.

 

“Tribbles,” they answer in unison, meeting each other on the twin wavelengths of not understanding and not bothering to explain, as they very occasionally do.

 

“Fab! Bernie or Frankie?”

 

“That’s a point, why did you name the orange one if it’s not yours?”

 

“He’s the alpha,” Ophelia says like it’s completely normal. “Must dash, Captain’s here.”

 

Three seconds later, Gertrude appears in the doorway and Hamlet is left with his mind reeling, but most predominantly and trivially pleased that Ophelia said ‘must dash’.

 

✧

 

It starts out, as all batshit things on the Helsingør do, as an experiment.

 

See, it turns out not only does Bernardo follow Horatio like a disciple – this new orange one does too. It’s uncanny. Hamlet stops by at lunchtime and the two fluff balls zoom around the floor of his quarters after him, and when Hamlet leaves them all to it they were zooming down the corridor together towards the library.

 

It gives him an idea, or more accurately, gives Guildenstern an idea when he relays it all to her en return.

 

“Do you think he has some kind of aura? Like catnip?”

 

“My boyfriend is not tribble-nip, Guil.”

 

“He seems very well to be, Ham. Look, I know it’s kind of rude but just to clarify… he is human, right?”

 

“Yeah! I mean, yeah. He looks it, he says he is, he loves mozzarella sticks.”

 

“Hmm,” she ponders, and Hamlet feels that if by the metaphor this wasn’t her car, she’d put her feet up on the dashboard round about now. “Okay, well why don’t we make sure we’re right, before we go making random conclusions? Rule of three, basis of science?”

 

“How are we gonna do that?”

 

She grins. “Oh Hamlet. You’re forgetting the rest of them.”

 

✧

 

They track down the holding room with ease, and when he’s unlocking the door he remembers all the horror stories about rapidly breeding tribbles in small rooms, but they’ve either been neutered or are unusually well behaved because as it says in the log, there are only about twenty. They seem to have been sleeping but when Guil steps into the room a faint chorus of purring starts.

 

“See? Docile as anything!” Hamlet exclaims. “It’s definitely just Horatio.”

 

Guil picks the nearest one up and scratches behind where its ear would be. “They’re so cute,” she croons.

 

“All basic things are cute,” Hamlet points out.

 

“You’re immune!” Guil gasps, as if that’s vital information to this whole ordeal.

 

“I’m not, actually, you idiot. I’m Bernardo’s dad too.”

 

“Weird.”

 

She strokes its back a couple of times and then appears to remember she had a plan. “Right, so the plan.”

 

The plan is to distract Horatio and then put a third tribble into the mix and see how it reacts to him. Hamlet figures he’ll do the distraction part, because at this stage in their relationship it’s fairly easy.

 

He drags him by the hand out of his room and along the corridor; the first nook he sees he crowds Horatio into it so they can’t be seen from anyone who doesn’t walk directly past them.

 

“What are you doing?” Horatio murmurs breathlessly, looking up at him with big eyes. Hamlet braces his hand on the wall behind Horatio’s head and leans down, bringing his hand down behind his neck.

 

He finds the switch and flicks it. “Computer, can you autosing ‘Tainted Love’ by Soft Cell, please?” he says, and then to Horatio as the computer starts her horrendous rendition, “Look what I found she could do!”

 

Horatio stares at him. Hamlet doesn’t blame him; when Fort had told him yesterday that there’s an autoread function for fucking music he’d almost lost his mind. He’d never listen to real music again – why would you when instead you could hear a perfectly tuned and horribly enunciated song read by a machine instead?

 

Horatio’s still staring at him.

 

“What?” Hamlet says, and Horatio bursts out laughing. Hamlet grins back.

 

“ _You bastard_ ,” Horatio hisses, and Hamlet locks away the memory of the rare swear, and Horatio grabs his shirt and pulls him in for a kiss.

 

A little distance away, he hears Guil cough dementedly and thinks that was probably the signal they agreed on that the deed had been done. Hamlet kisses Horatio once more and releases him back into the corridor.

 

“Enjoy this new knowledge,” he parts with, “I’ll see you at dinner.”

 

He walks off the opposite way they’d come from Horatio’s quarters, and he almost immediately bumps into Guildenstern.

 

“All good?”

 

“Yeah, just scarred for life,” she replies cheerfully.

 

“Well, I didn’t start it,” Hamlet says, and she rolls her eyes. He turns and they watch the three fluffballs disappear around the bend in the corridor after their Tribble Jesus.

 

“I guess that basically answers that,” she concludes after a moment.

 

“Let’s check in later,” he suggests. “The Captain will have our heads.”

 

✧

 

“I just don’t understand where they’re coming from,” Horatio is saying exasperatedly. The three animals are piled up on his lap happily, and symbolically not letting him throw his arms up in confusion.

 

“They just like you,” Hamlet waves it off, fake-reasonably. “The rest of us are too busy to pay attention to them.”

 

“But! Where did they come from, Hamlet? Where!”

 

He bites down a laugh. “Dunno, babe.”

 

It’s very quickly degenerated into pranking, which is not something Hamlet is all too familiar with but Rosencrantz and Guildenstern definitely and absolutely are. He only concedes because a) it is, at worst, completely harmless, b) it really only involves not mentioning to Horatio that he knew about it, and c) Horatio really likes tribbles. He’s confused, but very happy, like the unexpected tax return of someone who thinks they’re good at maths.

 

So the new plan is called Operation Tribble-nip, and involves one of the three of them releasing a tribble into Horatio’s room once every three hours, when Horatio, like clockwork, would go back to the library for more chips or to the commons for some tea, etc. Hamlet had really taught him well about moving once in a while.

 

By the next day, he seems to have accepted his fate as the Tribble Pied Piper (which Rosencrantz had come up with, having refused to call him Tribble Jesus).

 

Hamlet comes down to the Science Garden that evening to find no room on the bench for him, as Horatio is lying down covered in a blanket of fluff that is slightly vibrating with satisfaction. He takes a picture with his pad and sits on the floor next to the bench; Horatio’s hand lazily finds his hair, and Hamlet wishes the future could just be this moment, stretched out to infinity.


	6. week six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If he could choose a word to describe life right now it would be ‘peachy’, and even when Rosencrantz vetoes it, he doesn’t disagree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for not uploading yesterday, did a bit of reshuffling! one of the next few days I'll upload two chapters to get back on schedule :D
> 
> a note: this is where the smut tag is fulfilled... (ed: to avoid, just skip the scene after they leave the medbay!) it's only brief, but it's my first posted smut so forgive me my sins. hope you enjoy and happy halfway point!

They drop the tribble swarm off on Atria with a slight teary-eye from Horatio, his attachment not seeming to have been any lessened by the truth that unravelled when they landed and Ophelia made Hamlet, Ros and Guilly collect the bastards and pack them up. He keeps Bernardo of course, and after having twenty following them everywhere, a single one doesn’t bother Hamlet in the slightest. He’s grown quite fond of the little guy to be honest.

 

Even after they’re gone, there’s a notably more relaxed mood on the ship, or at least in Hamlet’s circles. The moment on the bench that he’d wanted to stretch on seems to have listened and done just that: if he could choose a word to describe life right now it would be ‘peachy’, and even when Rosencrantz vetoes it, he doesn’t disagree.

 

The best thing is that Horatio comes out of his proverbial crater. Hamlet had been a little worried he’d been monopolising his boyfriend’s time and accidentally stifling opportunities for him to hang out with more people by wanting to be with him all the time. In a way, Hamlet going back to work is a good thing for all but his own selfish reasons.

 

Everyone likes Horatio of course, but everyone is also always busy, which presents a problem. This is how his strange friendship with Fortinbras begins. Fort is meant to be always busy too, but he likes to walk-and-talk, and also skive off at the first opportunity and call it ‘research’, and also is less likely to be hit with a phaser on the job like the bridge crew. It’s a perfect system really, but Hamlet is still surprised when Horatio mentions one day that he went down to the medbay to pay him a visit. On the surface, it shouldn’t work, what with Fort’s take-no-shit-probably-still-get-hit general attitude to life and Horatio’s, well, niceness. But then when he thinks about it, he guesses what it comes down to is that they’re both huge nerds. Fort has elevated access to a whole scientific database, and Horatio has an unending curiosity about just about everything, so it works well.

 

Hamlet starts hearing more and more about their adventures down the rabbit holes of the data system together, and how Horatio has started playing chess with patients sometimes during busy hours, and how Fort has officially warned him about his subpar circulation and prescribed “moving”. It’s very cute. Two introverts avoiding the masses together. Hamlet’s just sad this means his wishful thinking that Fort would be most likely to defend his honour in this relationship is now officially trashed.

 

✧

 

When he can’t find Horatio in the library, the Science Garden or his quarters, Hamlet heads down to the medbay for the first time in a while to go see him. It’s not like he’s been avoiding the place, but hell yeah he’s been avoiding the place: in his head, the recovery is as much a part as the accident as the crash itself. He’s been delegating all his medbay-ward errands as much as possible. Even just standing in the doorway now feels like peering into a triggering memory in a Pensieve.

 

“Hey!” Horatio greets him, hopping off the empty bed he’d been perched on to come and kiss him.

 

“This is a sterile environment,” Fortinbras points out without looking up from his sinister beaker-mixing. None of the coloured liquids are bubbling and there’s no lightening that Hamlet can see, but the mad scientist effect is still strong as ever. He swears the guy does it deliberately.

 

“Evening, Doctors,” Hamlet says. “What horrors are you preparing today?”

 

Horatio beams excitedly and answers, “We’re looking at asteroid samples with specific atmospheres to see what happens when life is introduced.”

 

“That sounds suspiciously boring. What does happen?”

 

“Lots of violent deaths, mostly,” Fort says. He finally turns from his teetering multiple-beaker contraption to pluck a leaf from a tall plant on the counter beside him. He then drops it into a small glass case on top of the extremely scientific microwave and the leaf instantly bursts into gloopy purple slime-flames. “That’s Fox Bravo Tango,” he adds, like that means anything.

 

“We passed it this morning!” Horatio tells Hamlet, looking like he’s won the lottery. “We could’ve imploded!”

 

“Well, glad you guys are having fun.”

 

He hangs out for a while and watches them talk at high speeds about which of the samples would kill you instantly and which would just fatally injure you and kill you slowly. The room is still horrible to be in, but Horatio fluttering about and filling up the space with his nonsense makes it a little less so.

 

✧

 

Eventually an actual patient arrives needing stitches from an overenthusiastic game of Shalagar Hoops, and Fort shoos them away with a promise that he won’t make anything explode without waiting for Horatio.

 

The two of them head to the viewdecks, specifically Viewdeck 6, which they've divulged is the least used due to it facing backwards, which the average person isn't too interested in. Luckily for them, Horatio is interested in everything, and Hamlet's mainly interested in Horatio.

 

When they sit down, Horatio sighs, but in a sort of peaced-out way rather than an indication that anything’s wrong. He leans into the crook of Hamlet’s arm and settles in to watch the stars and the smoke, but then almost at once startles himself and turns to Hamlet, looking appalled.

 

“What? What’s wrong?” Hamlet asks.

 

“I never asked how your day was!”

 

Hamlet shoves him lightly in the arm. “Don’t briefly worry me about things like that, dude!”

 

“I’m a bad partner,” Horatio laments, resting his head on Hamlet’s shoulder and clutching his shirt like a full-on damsel.

 

“In your defence, my day wasn’t particularly anything, and if it had been I would’ve opened with that earlier.”

 

“No! I have to ask!”

 

“Don’t do that cringey thing where you pretend we’re starting the conversation over again. Please. Lord Almighty.”

 

Horatio raises his head again and frowns. “Fine. But I’m still gonna ask and you have to tell me.”

 

Hamlet laughs. “I think you might be the only person in the Verse to utilise the power of angry politeness like this.”

 

Horatio glares in reply, and pulls him in uncompromisingly for a kiss. “Good day?”

 

Hamlet can tell he won’t let in until he releases some kind of detail, so he plays along.

 

“Excellent day, babe. Accidentally flew into the gravitational pull of a dying star.”

 

“That’s what that was?”

 

“Apologies for the turbulence. It was a good time, though. Well, not for the star in the end. How was _your_ day?"

 

"Good, thank you! Finished the Hell Chapter."

 

"Onto another Hell Chapter?"

 

"Of course."

 

"You should've picked a nicer topic."

 

"Well, the topic kind of picked me."

 

This satisfies him. They settle down properly, kicking their shoes off and tucking them up under them on the bench. They look out of the panoramic window, the shoots of steam on the starboard side, the receding point of light that was the planet they'd passed that morning. Hamlet reaches down and takes Horatio's hand absently.

 

"You have _such_ bad circulation," he flirts.

 

"Fortinbras keeps giving me things to take to various people around the deck. I think he thinks he’s being subtle.”

 

“I’m sure he doesn’t.

 

Pleasant quiet.

 

"I miss our walks," Horatio says out of blue.

 

"Me too, Doc."

 

"Don't call me that," he punches Hamlet feebly in the arm, still staring blissfully out the window.

 

"Why not? It's sexy."

 

He makes a face and side-eyes him. "My qualifications?"

 

"Yeah," Hamlet says in a low voice, faux-sultry. He moves into Horatio's space, taking up his eyeline so he's almost in his lap, their linked hands between them and Hamlet’s other arm caging him back into his seat. "You're so smart, babe," he simpers, and Horatio rolls his eyes, but his face in warm when Hamlet leans in and kisses his temple. "You're the whole package, hot genius with a–" (another kiss) "–kind heart." Oops. This had gotten sincere very quickly. "You're everything," he murmurs, like an epiphany, but one he’s known the whole time. Beneath him, Horatio is still. Hamlet ghosts his lips across his jaw and hovers over Horatio's mouth, looking up to his eyes as they breathe together.

 

Horatio meets his mouth and pushes him back, releasing his hand in favour of grabbing at his uniform shirt and pulling him tighter in. Hamlet rearranges himself on his lap with a knee either side of him and braces himself on the back of the bench, everything about it simultaneously hard and soft. Hamlet pretty quickly reaches that torturous stage of happiness – the aching.

 

"You've got more qualifications than me," Horatio bites back, and Hamlet isn't sure whether this is a euphemism until he continues. "Academy First Class, three PhDs, Cardamaya 01."

 

"You've done your research," Hamlet replies as best he can when Horatio is scattering his throat with kisses in between words.

 

"And you're compassionate, passionate, hardworking, relentless–"

 

"Is that – _ah_ – a compliment?"

 

"It is from me," Horatio says, and Hamlet's struck yet again by how different he is like this to when he's being a fancy scholar, or in this new development, Fortinbras’ Igor. He’s not like this anywhere else. For anyone else. "And you're horribly attractive," Horatio continues, and Hamlet grabs his face and kisses him hard.

 

They've sort of accidentally been grinding on each other this entire time, and when Hamlet pulls back briefly to catch his breath, he notices he's actually panting, heart-rate out the window, running around in the stars.

 

"Horatio," he says hoarsely. "I wanna–"

 

"Less talking please," Horatio says calmly, and slips his fingers up Hamlet's shirt, consciously reminiscent of the girl in the library.

 

“What about the–? This is a public area, ‘Ratio,” he points out weakly, even as he’s fumbling with Horatio’s robe.

 

“Better hurry, then,” Horatio answers, and then swears when Hamlet touches the bare skin of his stomach.

 

"Can I?" he asks breathlessly, hands hovering at his belt. In answer, Horatio unbuckles it himself at lightning speed, shuffling them around a little, and then hooking his fingers under Hamlet's trouser hem. Hamlet groans and kisses him as they fumble further, desperately pushing down their clothes; at one point he gets caught in a button and Horatio ends up laughing too much to keep kissing him as they try and untangle themselves. Then he pushes his hand into Horatio's underwear and grazes his fingers along his cock. He's half-hard already and can feel the electricity of friction under his touch, and he feels on the brink of coming just from this as it is, which is ridiculous. He thinks with a touch of horror that he might have a voyeuristic kink.

 

" _Fuck_ , Hamlet," Horatio says, sounding wrecked, pulling him from his self-aware thoughts and immediately forgetting why he cared. He puts his other hand in Horatio's damp hair, holding his head and pulling away just a little, to meet his eyes.

 

"Is this okay?" he asks, equally wretched; they’ve come undone so quickly. It’s reassuring he’s not the only one.

 

"Yeah, yeah, more," Horatio answers with characteristic briskness, and Hamlet kisses down the words, saving them for later. He runs his fingers to the base of Horatio’s cock, then back up, twisting his fist just how he likes it on himself.

 

At that moment Horatio works his way into Hamlet's underwear and he has to stop and have a moment. He uses the refuge to quickly bring his own hand to his mouth and spi on his fingers before continuing, slick and hot. Horatio has freed Hamlet’s cock now too and they're tantalisingly close to each other. Hamlet shifts on Horatio's lap and they move against each other, the friction making him stifle his sounds. _God, what if someone_ – he thinks to himself, and his last coherent thought cuts out halfway through.

 

"Horatio, I'm gonna–" Hamlet chokes out.

 

"Me too," Horatio murmurs into his neck, then finds a path to Hamlet's lips and takes it, tongue pushing into his mouth.

 

Hamlet speeds up the pace of their rhythm, the synced keening and thrusting, and Horatio starts to shake under him, and suddenly he's coming in Hamlet's hand and Hamlet lets go, their come hitting both their chests, mixing, sticking them together, as gross as it is hot, and Hamlet pants into Horatio's mouth and Horatio mutters, " _Fuck, fuck, fuck_."


	7. week seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What happened?” Horatio asks softly.
> 
> “Nothing _happened_ ,” Hamlet replies honestly, and it strikes him how stupid and petulant he sounds.

By cruel coincidence, Friday is their month anniversary (unarguably an actual milestone) and Saturday is a month until their scheduled docking in Blackdog. It kind of unravels things.

 

Hamlet wants to be the type of person to just enjoy what time he has with someone or something, but he’s more the type to stare at the clock the whole time and ruin it like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because he really likes Horatio. _Really_ likes him. It’s got to the point where he can’t really ignore his own thoughts about what they’ll do after Horatio’s left behind on Blackdog and he’s still got eighteen months’ duty to complete before he can go back to him. It’s an unspoken rule that no one should pursue anything serious until at least your third or fourth mission. This is only Hamlet’s second. He hadn’t even thought it would apply to him.

 

He thinks Horatio’s guessed why he’s been quiet, or is thinking the same; they’ve been spending a fair amount of time in the Science Garden, lounging on the comfy seats and looking at the flowers, Hamlet playing with Horatio’s fingers, not saying much.

 

Hamlet lets himself wish, for the first time in months, that Chief was around to give him advice.

 

✧

 

“You’ve healed well,” Horatio remarks on Wednesday night.

 

“Thanks?” Hamlet replies. “Didn’t know you’d hurt me.”

 

“I mean from before. When I first got here.”

 

“Well, it’s been quite a while.”

 

“Healing takes a while.”

 

Hamlet looks over at him.

 

“I just mean… you look good.”

 

Hamlet smiles, blushing a bit somehow, even after this long, even when that’s not what he means exactly. “Thank you.”

 

“I,” Horatio continues, but stops himself. Hamlet lets go of his hand and he pulls it to himself, sort of like he’s caving in. “I hope you don’t mind, I… looked at the report.”

 

“They’re public access,” Hamlet says after a beat.

 

“Yeah,” Horatio agrees, like that made a point, which he guesses it did, really. “You didn’t tell me much.”

 

“Didn’t wanna talk about it. Anymore, I mean. You came right at the point I started being able to think about other things.”

 

He’d meant it to be light but it didn’t come out all that breezy. Horatio shuffles along the seat to him and slips an arm through his. Hamlet tries to relax, tries not to succumb to the habitual discomfort of giving it room to breathe in his head.

 

“I couldn’t…” Horatio falters again. They look out over the garden, so green you can barely tell there’s four walls. Horatio swallows beside him. “I read the initial statements, and the public records and so on, but I couldn’t… breach patient confidentiality to find out if you… still…”

 

Hamlet knows what he’s getting at, but gives himself a few more seconds. “Fortinbras is doing his job, then, it seems. I’m shocked and impressed.”

 

“Hamlet.”

 

“If you mean the therapy then yes, I go.” Silence between them. “I don’t work late on Thursdays.”

 

Horatio makes a vague noise and leans his head onto Hamlet’s shoulder; Hamlet leans his head onto Horatio’s, and he tries to think about that instead.

 

“I’m sorry,” Horatio says at last.

 

“Not your fault. Not anyone’s.”

 

“I mean for making you talk about it.”

 

“Oh. It’s okay. Couldn’t keep this up forever.” That makes Horatio go still for a few seconds, stiff next to him.

 

More silence, except for the slight rustle of false wind.

 

“I’m glad you go,” Horatio says after a long while.

 

Hamlet closes his eyes. “Me too.”

 

_You came right at the point I started being able to think about other things._

 

Shit.

 

✧

 

“Should I be worried?” he asks the therapist the next day. “What if this whole thing is just a way for my brain to distract myself?”

 

“Love as a coping mechanism,” the guy nods, which is something Hamlet would totally say himself, but as, like, a joke.

 

“Seriously,” he insists. “Should I be worried?”

 

The guy (he does have a name, but Hamlet had deliberately forgotten it straight away because he believes in boundaries: if he knew his name, he wouldn’t be able to tell him anything) looks at him, unreadable.

 

“No, Hamlet, I don’t think that’s what’s going on.”

 

Hamlet deflates in relief. “Really?”

 

“I think it’s mere happy coincidence that this relationship is happening at a time when you need support. I think it’s helping you heal.”

 

There it is again, ‘heal’. Like there are still open wounds.

 

“It is, I think,” Hamlet agrees. “Although that brings up another paranoia,” – and here, the guy smiles exasperatedly as he tends to do –  “Do you think it’s hindering my progress at all? Or vice versa? Because I’ve been distracted, so I haven’t been… working through anything.”

 

“Haven’t you?”

 

He thinks about it. “Well, I still can’t sleep.”

 

The guy looks him over again. “Progress doesn’t always mean results,” he says cryptically, and Hamlet has to laugh. “No, really! When a baby’s learning to walk, the first hundred or thousand times they try, they won’t get anywhere, but it doesn’t mean they’re not learning.”

 

“Alright, alright.”

 

“Give yourself some credit.”

 

Without fully meaning to, he replies, “I just want it to be over. I wanna be normal again.”

 

Guy doesn’t respond to that, and Hamlet knows it’s because the answer is he’ll never be normal again, or rather: this _is_ his new normal. He’s simultaneously the happiest he’d ever been, and the worst he’d ever be.

 

As he’s leaving the session, he thinks of another question to ask him, but just waves awkwardly as the door closes. It’s not like he’ll know the answer, and if he did, Hamlet’s not sure he wants to know it anyway.

 

_What am I gonna do when my distraction leaves me in a month?_

 

✧

 

Hamlet calls in sick Friday morning, and looks so bad Fortinbras confirms it for the Captain and she lets him hole up in his quarters with the lights off.

 

He wants to cry — not least because he’s ruining their anniversary with his own bullshit: self-fulfilling, yet a-fucking-gain – but he can’t get himself to. He can’t get himself to sleep, either, so he’s just listening to the occasional beep of his clock, staring at a loose thread on the edge of his duvet, wasting time on not improving how he feels, every minute dragging against his soul like a dumbbell.

 

Horatio doesn’t realise he’s not on the bridge until around noon when he comes to drop something of Hamlet’s off in his room. He squeals when he turns the bedside lamp on and sees the lump in the bed.

 

“It’s just me,” Hamlet says from under the covers. It’s a considerable effort to talk, which he attributes to how it wrenches him from his state of deadness to the real world again. The idea of moving to look out over the duvet doesn’t bear thinking about, so he doesn’t.

 

“Hamlet? What are you doing here? Are you alright?”

 

“I’m just— it’s fine.”

 

“You didn’t tell me you were sick.”

 

“I’m—” _not sick_ , he’s going to say, before remembering the validation the therapist has drilled into his head: hooray, he _is_ actually sick, just in the head.

 

He hears Horatio come across the room and feels a hand on his back.

 

“Can I come in?” he asks.

 

Hamlet makes a vague noise of reply and Horatio ducks under the covers, evidently kneeling beside the bed, chin resting on the sheets a foot away from Hamlet’s.

 

“Hey,” he says.

 

“Hi.”

 

Horatio surveys his face for a few moments, and Hamlet does his best not to hide from his gaze, although he doesn’t move his hand from where it’s covering half his face.

 

“What happened?” Horatio asks softly.

 

“Nothing _happened,”_ Hamlet replies honestly, and it strikes him how stupid and petulant he sounds. It’s regression: he’s turned into a teenager again, one who just runs away, who avoids any conversation more meaningful than commenting on the weather. God, he misses the weather. No weather in space. No easy solution to small talk. This isn’t small talk, though. Why can’t he just say stuff?

 

Oh yeah. Because saying things out loud makes them real.

 

But why is he trying to hide from Horatio? Why doesn’t he want everything about this to be real?

 

“Sorry,” he says. “And don’t say ‘don’t be sorry’, because I’m sorry.”

 

“O…kay?”

 

Hamlet thinks about sitting up, being a real adult, but also thinks that whatever is making him feel like talking will leave him if he changes a single thing, and he wants to tell Horatio.

 

“I just. I wanted this to be easy.” He starts. “I wanted it to be fun and good and easy, and it was for a while, but I’ve made it not so fun.”

 

“What are you talking about?” Horatio looks worried.

 

“Oh, I’m not breaking up with you,” Hamlet clarifies quickly. “Not in the slightest. Maybe something of the opposite, but hear me out.”

 

Horatio still looks concerned but gestures for him to carry on, clumsy under the covers.

 

“I wanna be honest with you so I’m gonna tell you what I’m thinking, even if it doesn’t completely… make sense. Some of it doesn’t even to me.” He pauses, and Horatio nods encouragingly. That’s what opens the flood barrier. “The thing is, I can’t stop thinking about how you’re leaving next month and I won’t get to see you for over a year and how maybe you won’t wanna carry on after that because who would? Guil said right before I asked you out ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’ and I think maybe it’s this, it’s the best case scenario, because now we have to deal with this. And I know that’s such a stupid problem to have, but the stakes feel so high now because I’m in so deep. And I also can’t stop thinking about how our whole relationship can only ever fit into the honeymoon period because of you leaving, so the variables are corrupt anyway and I have no idea what’s gonna happen or if we’ll get through it, and I really want to. And about how the honeymoon period has been extending to, well, my head, and now we’re somewhere I’m getting back to my usual not-so-good self and maybe _that’ll_ make you want to leave… everything comes back to you leaving, which I don’t want to be, like, emotional blackmail – it’s just what I’m thinking about.”

 

He stops and remembers to breathe instead of spiral.

 

“That makes perfect sense,” Horatio says in the quiet. “I’m worried too, about almost everything. But we’ll work it out.” Hamlet wants to cry, and actually feels like he might be able to now, so instead he unclenches his hand and reaches across the tiny space; Horatio shifts and takes it, holds it tightly, thumb rubbing his skin softly like a reminder. He continues, “I’m not a, uh, big fan of contractual unions but I believe in ‘in sickness and health’. I’ll be here for you whatever you’re going through. I have been, I hope. You’ve been going through a lot for a while.”

 

“My brain’s a stickler for routine,” Hamlet gets out. “It’s annoyed about how happy you’ve made me.”

 

Horatio laughs softly, briefly resting his forehead on their clasped hands between them.

 

“I love you,” Hamlet says. The words ride his tired exhale like surfing a wave.

 

Horatio’s face falls, but in the sense that his expression seems to collapse into something deeper. “I love you too,” he says, almost imperceptibly. He smiles across at him and Hamlet wonders why he does this to himself, isolate and mull over, make supernovas out of meteors. Horatio isn’t going to make that go away, but he’s literally offering himself up to talk it through, help any way he can: just be there.

 

It’s not as good as their two week anniversary and Bernardo, but when Hamlet drifts off to sleep with Horatio curled around him, he finds himself on the same emotional wavelength as then. A quieter version. A peacefulness less volcanic. One that feels it’ll last.


	8. week eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We'll be alright," Hamlet tells him. "No lifesigns this side of the planet, remember. Think of it as an awkward work sleepover."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what plot through yonder fanfic breaks? tis the east and hamlet's tragic past is the sun

The Captain has given up warning them of the dangers of onboard relationships and thrown her full, terrifying force into upping their replicator allowance so they can have fancy date food at weekends, and letting Hamlet knock off early sometimes so they can get in a movie before dinner, that kind of thing. Hamlet thinks – although he’s not thinking about it – that she feels sorry for him. It’s all around pretty nice, having someone around in a bad patch in the first place, and then having the people around you also doing what they can in support. He’s never had a proper circle before, even on his last mission it wasn’t quite in place, and he realises with some degree of shock that he’s had this one for a while now. Even if some of them are annoying or plain idiotic, they’re basically his family.

 

He does this realising when they get stranded on a class-m with nothing to do but wait for help from the nearest Federation vessel twelve hours warp away. He starts to understand what people mean when they say they _enjoy_ holidays, but being stuck with their family drives them around the bend.

 

All but fifteen volunteer crew had transported down to the craggy surface for the afternoon, as it had been a long while since they had a real shoreleave, and then naturally there’s a goddamn shipwide powercut, something which isn’t recorded to have happened in forty years. The volunteer crew onboard had commed to say they’re huddled in the brig, the only place where the generator hadn’t fritzed out in the cut, saving power by sitting in the dark and eating bland emergency nutrition bars. Hamlet doesn’t envy them – the rest of them might be stuck in caves, but at least it’ll still be light for a while, and Fort and Acker think they’ve found edible foliage.

 

By what would be dinnertime, they’ve gathered enough for some kind of meal: they build several huge bonfires and roast roots and a few squirrel-like creatures, and it actually tastes really good (although that might be the desperation talking, not to mention that none of them have eaten non-replicated meals since the last starbase).

 

Most people wander off after they’ve eaten, to explore or just find a warm place to sleep because there’s not much else to do. The fires die down to a smoulder. It’s amazingly peaceful, but again, that might be desperation turned hysteria. Hamlet just hopes they don’t have those five-foot-talon eagles like they had come across last year in a similar situation, although the lifesign reader insists they’re alone.

 

The officer’s fire has the luxury of being ringed with uncomfortable summer-camp-esque logs to sit on, and it soon winds down to just the core bridge gang on one side. Polonius is there too, going off about something to the Captain who’s trying bravely to seem interested. Horatio is next to Hamlet, an honorary officer for the night thanks to good old nepotism.

 

"So," Laertes says mischievously when a lull of quiet descends. "Twelve hours on an unexplored planet. Whatever shall we do to pass the time?"

 

His grin worries Hamlet, and he hopes he isn't going to suggest an orgy.

 

"Play cards?" Rosencrantz suggests.

 

"Do you _have_ cards?" the Captain asks, amazed.

 

"Always," he announces, for some unknown reason seeming proud to have such old-man habits; he reaches into his bag, fumbles a bit, and then with great panache pulls out a movie chip of some old romcom. "I've never b– what is this? Who took my cards?"

 

"Are you sure that's not yours?" Hamlet asks. "It has your rental number on the back."

 

Rosencrantz splutters. "Well– If– Even if it was mine, it wouldn't be in here! I remember putting them in here before we left!"

 

Hamlet notices Guil looking shifty as hell, and uncharacteristically not roasting Ros at the first opportunity. She's gnawing on a leftover root and staring at her feet.

 

Beside him, Horatio murmurs, "I think we have a person of interest."

 

Rosencrantz twists madly to look at him, then again to follow his gaze. " _You!_ Why would you steal my cards? You hate cards!"

 

"Exactly!" Guildenstern bursts out, pointing the root at him, all _j'accuse_. "You _always_ make me play cards! Every time there's a mere hint of sitting around waiting for something, it's cards! Because of you I now have this evolutionary personality trait where I talk really fast, and it’s so you don’t have the chance to suggest bloody cards!”

 

“Language,” Polonius interjects, and Hamlet can tell she’s really angry because she doesn’t repeat herself in Romulan for the Captain’s amusement like she usually would at that. Instead, she wisely ignores him and takes an angry bite of the root, glaring at Rosencrantz.

 

"She's right, you know, Ros," Hamlet points out after a tense second.

 

"She is, actually," Ophelia agrees.

 

Rosencrantz splutters some more. “I– you–! It’s not–!”

 

Polonius perks up at the prospect of unnecessarily taking control of the situation. He raises his hands like he's calming down two Gluonian marrahas and says cheerfully, "Well, this communication is just wonderful! Thank you, Guildenstern, for speaking up about your issue. Thank you, Rosencrantz, for, uh... hearing it. How about we acknowledge the other's wishes and apologise for any animosity, eh?"

 

They both glare at him.

 

"Only if he stops making me play fucking cards," Guil spits out.

 

“ _Language_.”

 

"And only if she promises not to steal any more of my goddamn property."

 

"Jesus," Hamlet mutters, and focuses on schooling his expression to be as blank as possible so it doesn't look like he's picking a side. This happens every once in a while, it’s no big deal. Horatio is a little more tense to his left, not having witnessed one of these arguments first-hand before. Hamlet wants to reassure him they'll be best buds again in about fifteen minutes, but can't think of a subtle way to do that. In the end he settles for taking his hand, which he’d been annoying for a while anyway. He squeezes it once and Horatio glances over at him; he tries to convey that all is well, that he’s a veteran of Guildencrantz squabbles at this point and for once he should be trusted.

 

✧

 

Miraculously, it takes less than the allotted fifteen minutes for Polonius to somehow wrangle them into civility (although he shouldn't really get the credit: the Captain had casually threatened to suspend them from the bridge if they couldn't work together optimally, and they’d caved pretty quick).

 

"Fine, fine, I'm sorry for yelling at you," Guil says in a rush, then seems to sense that she had barely hit the minimum word count. "And for stealing your cards. They're in a cupboard in engineering. And I guess I'm sorry for not telling you sooner and letting things... fester."

 

Polonius' word. He nods in approval and gestures for Ros to say his piece now.

 

Ros sighs. "I'm sorry for making you play cards all the time. I promise to stop. And sorry for not asking you what you wanted to do instead."

 

"Lovely," Polonius says, and Ophelia rolls her eyes.

 

Guildenstern shoots across the space, shoves Laertes out of the way and squashes in beside Rosencrantz, already launching into how much she approves of his terrible movie choices and couldn't wait to watch it when they got back.

 

"Wow," Horatio says.

 

"Truly remarkable," Hamlet agrees. "We can all only hope to have such good turnarounds in our relationships."

 

Horatio looks up at him again and smiles, squeezing his hand back at last.

 

"Well that was fun, but the question remains," Laertes says loudly over the hushed hubbub that had instantly resumed. He’s now sandwiched between the Captain and Acker, and looks disgruntled that the attention had so smoothly been diverted away from him.

 

"Sorry, there was a question?" Ophelia asks, clearly fully aware of what he was getting at.

 

"We gotta do something! I'm bored!"

 

"You haven't changed at all since you were twelve, dear _Lord_ ," Ophelia hisses. "What would you suggest, then?"

 

"Truth or dare."

 

"Oh my God, you literally _are_ twelve!" Hamlet exclaims in horror. "On principal, I object."

 

"Didn't you used to play that at the Academy?"

 

"Well, sure, but one: drunk. And perhaps more importantly, two: there were caveats. I flat-out refuse to play the teenage version, Tell Us Your Crush or Kiss Someone, which I assume is what you’re going for."

 

Laertes pouts.

 

"You're so horny," Guil marvels, and Ros hits her in the arm to shut up in front of the Captain.

 

✧

 

In the end they play charades and Hamlet and Horatio win, with their vast shared knowledge of both ends of the fiction scale and movies from their dates, closely followed by Laertes and Polonius because no one else knows any of the weird shit Ophelia (acting as umpire) chooses from the Colony. The Captain and Acker come in very averagely, and Guil and Ros are barely playing as they’re knee-deep in a debate about someone called Paul Rudd, so come in a miserable last.

 

Fort returns near the end of the game, looking grumpy and cold, and sits muttering into the remains of the bonfire while he warms his hands. 

 

Unfortunately, Claudius is in tow.

 

"How's everyone?" Guil asks Fortinbras, poking the dragon as she is wont to do.

 

"Everyone's great! Except the guy who fell in a pothole and broke his ankle within ten minutes of landing and won't shut up about it!"

 

"Brilliant," she grins.

 

"Has everyone found accommodation for the night?" the Captain asks.

 

"If by accommodation you mean a cave network with no light or privacy."

 

"If it's out of the wind, that's the best we have."

 

"Then it's five-star, sir."

 

Claudius sits at the end of one of the logs, a few feet down from Guil. She ignores him and carries on her conversation, and Hamlet can't tell if it's deliberate or not.

 

Horatio squeezes his hand again, and Hamlet realises he'd gone slack and almost pulled away. He swallows and tries to act normal, knowing Horatio is too smart to not notice, doing it anyway because this is now on him. If he just acts like he's fine, no one will say anything and make this awkward.

 

"No word from the USS Amsterdam?" Laertes asks Claudius pointlessly, because he would've said by now if there had been.

 

Claudius shakes his head. "No updates. ETA is still tomorrow morning at the earliest."

 

A chorus of groans goes around their circle.

 

The Captain sighs, or whatever it is she does when she sighs without actually exhaling. "Well, the rest of you ought to turn in soon so I can get some rest," she says, only half-joking. Hamlet couldn’t be a Captain; he’s always the first to go to bed. Someone just has to mention a word from the lexicon of sleep and he’s off.

 

"I'm going to be staying up a little longer, sir, if you'd like to head to the caves."

 

"Nothing sounds less appealing, but I will, thank you, Ophelia."

 

Polonius jumps up after her, nattering on about having _absolutely insisted_ the crew locate and reserve the _absolute best space_ for her, and they disappear into the falling darkness, his voice bubbling away into nothing but the weird crickets they have here.

 

Laertes and Acker decide they want to explore for a bit, see how far they can get. They’ve both volunteered for first watch so agree to return in a few hours so everyone can officially stand down. Ros starts pontificating about some constellation mapping he'd done in school and how, according to tonight's alien sky, he had been apparently horrendously bad at it. Ophelia coaxes the fire back to a semblance of life while Fort passive-aggressively moves along his seat every time a spark nearly gets him. Horatio winds his arm around Hamlet's waist, slipping into PDA now there are fewer people around – or maybe just because the Captain isn't. Guil keeps chipping into Ros' story scathingly, and a couple of times asks Claudius to confirm something in his expert opinion about blueprints. It's almost nice.

 

Hamlet is on fourth watch, which basically means he just has to wake up painfully early and see in the dawn. He’ll get a decent amount of sleep, at least.

 

He and Horatio head to the caves about an hour later, leaving the others mid-argument about who's second best with a phaser (the best being Ophelia, of course).

 

The cave network is about twenty minutes walk east through the eerie orange half-moon light; someone had the bright idea to light a fire outside the entrance for the stragglers and bathroom-goers to find their way back, so there’s no real danger of getting lost (except for Polonius, who is a liability).

 

Horatio is being quiet, even for him. Isn't even talking about the stars, and he loves his stars.

 

"We'll be alright," Hamlet tells him. "No lifesigns this side of the planet, remember. Think of it as an awkward work sleepover."

 

Horatio hums in response.

 

"It's not that?"

 

Horatio glances over at him. "I'm just thinking..." he starts.

 

"Always a good idea."

 

Their path turns into a slight incline, and Hamlet falls back a little, out of politeness of course, not because he's already getting out of breath.

 

Horatio walks on ahead, and without turning to face him, finishes his sentence. "About Claudius."

 

Hamlet doesn't trip, but he almost chokes on some gravel dust when he inhales sharply. 

 

The path plateaus again and Horatio turns to wait for him, meets his eyes. He even takes his hand, which Hamlet can't tell is for comforting purposes or to help him the last step because he looks like he's getting a stitch.

 

"Yeah," Hamlet replies.

 

"If you don't want to talk about it, I won't make you. I'm just concerned."

 

And Hamlet doesn't want to talk about it, but he also doesn't like keeping things from Horatio. He suddenly gets the impression Horatio has been avoiding the subject as much as him, for his sake, which is one of the kindest things he’s done yet, and paradoxically makes him want to tell him. If he has any intention of keeping this thing going after Horatio disembarks, he's gonna find out anyway eventually.

 

_God, today’s been so long._

 

It’s a lot like the last time this happened, under his bedcovers, the semi-darkness giving him the distance to get it out. "It's okay," he says. "I'll tell you if you want to know."

 

"Only if you're sure."

 

And he finds he is sure. "Horatio..."

 

"Sorry. I don't... I just hate seeing you..."

 

Hamlet's vaguely curious about what adjective he was going use, but when he sees Horatio visibly floundering he can't bear it and just says, "Yeah. It's okay. It was gonna come up eventually. You're no idiot, unfortunately."

 

"Hamlet, did he do something?" Horatio blurts out.

 

He isn't expecting the bluntness, the accuracy, the inaccuracy. He wants to burst into tears. Wants to ask his therapist how to handle this.

 

Instead, he starts walking again, a little slower than before: this isn't a conversation to have in or around the caves. Horatio is still holding his hand, and he clutches it like a tether, but doesn't look at him. It's easier if he speaks to the moons.

 

"Sort of," he answers.

 

✧

 

"I don't know if the Captain ever mentioned our old Chief of Engineering to you. 

 

“He was by cosmic, stupid coincidence also called Hamlet, so when I started earning bars everyone just started calling him Chief. We were on the Helsingør's maiden voyage together. It was my first mission too, but he was an old hand. Knew everything about the ship, taught me the ropes, taught me _more_ than the ropes. He was... well, I suppose he was my mentor. But really he was... a sort of... I mean, I don't know how much you've gleaned about my family life, but it's pretty dire. Chief was like a father to me. I. I loved him. Very much.

 

“And it wasn't just me, everyone loved him. He was the reason it worked, all this. The Captain wanted him to be her Number One but he didn't want it, didn't want to leave the ship in someone else's hands. The Helsingør is my home, and he was… part of it. Couldn’t separate them in your head, even if you wanted.

 

“This was six years ago. Fast-forward to the beginning of this trip, a few months before you arrive. Life’s good, really good, got a revamped crew – Ros had officially transferred to us, Ophelia had taken over from Acker as First Officer, much to his relief. The, the astrological planets aligned and it felt like everything was exactly how it should be, like the start of the rest of my life. Three years on the road with the greatest crew you could hope for. A couple of weird new guys like Polonius, as with every ship, but whatever, they’re harmless.

 

“And then White Orchard happened.

 

“White Orchard was this planet way out in the wilderness of deep space: we're talking one station of contact for the span of a quadrant. It was a Xenogeology Base. We were meant to be investigating a distress signal from the surface, something about a system that had gone down. Chief said he'd try and help with it but he'd need an assistant, and you can probably guess where this is going. Claudius was one of the weird new guys, worked in engineering too. He volunteered. We couldn't beam down because of atmosphere interference, so the two of them took one shuttle and Ophelia, Fort and I took another. Long story short, we lost communication with them for about twenty minutes, and when the shuttle resurfaced, Chief was dead.

 

“Claudius said there'd been an onboard explosion, and the autopsy lined up with that. But I just know, okay, don't ask me how but I _know_ Claudius had something to do with it.

 

“Something was just wrong about the whole thing. Chief never would have let a shuttle malfunction, let alone goddamn explode. Things always go wrong in space but that’s exactly where he thrived, in fixing, in emergencies. And _Claudiu_ s– God, it was so convenient. He took over straight away. Told the Captain it was the least he could do, it would be a fucking honour. No one else around for lightyears to contest for the position. No one to say what Chief's last words, his wishes, were or were not. 

 

“That's maybe the worst thing, that he had to spend his last moments with that man, probably fighting for his life, confused as all hell as to what was happening. And I was right there. And I didn't do a thing.

 

“I told Ophelia about it but she just thought I was traumatised, and I mean– but it's different. Fort is the one who wrote the medical reports, so of course _he_ believes them. I don't know where Guil and Ros stand. I think they want to believe me but they don't. And the Captain– she doesn't even know. They're friends now. I left it too late.

 

“And so now I'm in mandated therapy, and have to work with Claudius every day, and two weeks before you arrived I crashed a shuttle into a moon and someone else got killed because I hallucinated that I saw him die in front of me.”

 

They’re almost at the caves. When Hamlet falls silent, Horatio stops walking and tugs him back by the hand, making Hamlet turn to look at him.

 

The day’s exhaustion seems to crush him all at once. There’s something bland about talking about it. Right now, it feels like the fight has almost left him.

 

“Hamlet…” Horatio says.

 

“Sorry to ruin the mood.”

 

“Fucking hell,” Horatio snaps, and Hamlet realises his expression is one of anger. When he goes to pull his hand away, Horatio won’t let him. Instead, he tugs him closer so he can reach with his other hand to touch Hamlet’s cheek. He continues at a quarter of the volume, and the sorrow in his voice is so deep it shakes Hamlet’s core in something like familiarity. “I wasn’t… expecting it to be that, at _all_ , that’s… unspeakable. I’m so sorry.”

 

Hamlet shrugs minutely. They stand there in the dark for a while, foreheads pressed together, Horatio’s thumb rubbing warmly against his cheek.

 

“I wish he could’ve met you,” he chokes out, and Horatio lets go of him in order to properly wrap his arms around him in a tight hug, like he’s trying to glue him back together.


	9. week nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the brink of sleep, Hamlet thinks that of all the things to distract yourself from your boyfriend going away, solving a murder mystery together is an interesting choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i messed up my own schedule by getting busy... next chapter will be up sunday night!

They talk about it for several hours solidly during morning watch. The air is crisp, and they collect fresh logs for the fire as Horatio asks him more about Chief, more about that day, more about the in-between period of afterwards, details he’d forgotten, almost probing – but Hamlet didn’t mind. He remembers that he enjoys talking about Chief, even though he thinks it’ll always hurt.

 

The strangest thing – although perhaps not so strange at all: he can’t decide – is that Horatio believes him. He doesn’t know what he would’ve done if he hadn’t. Done what he had with the rest of them, he supposes, just not talk about it ever again.

 

“I know it sounds mad,” he says for the sixth time, “I just _know_.”

 

Horatio nods and hands him another log.

 

“I trust you,” he says simply, and Hamlet hopes that won’t be his downfall.

 

✧

 

It’s not until the following night when they’re in bed again that Horatio suggests it.

 

It’s the first time they’ve been alone since that morning; the Amsterdam had mercifully appeared and repaired the ship so efficiently that it left them all feeling faintly ridiculous for spending the night on a potentially harmful and definitely bloody boring planet. By noon, they’re up and running again, and after warping “as far away from there as possible” (the Captain’s words), they essentially got the afternoon off because the system was out of whack. So really it was mid-afternoon, not nighttime, but Hamlet plans to sleep for twelve hours starting now, so same difference.

 

“I think we should try and prove it,” Horatio murmurs into his neck, in the weirdest foreplay to date.

 

“It?” Hamlet asks, but he knows as soon as he says it.

 

“That Claudius killed Hamlet.”

 

No one had called him that for years, so much so that for a moment Hamlet thinks he’s talking about _him_ , and isn’t that fake-deep.

 

Hamlet sits up. “You want to…?”

 

“Yeah, I mean.” Horatio sits up beside him. “If no one’s looked into it, there could definitely be something.”

 

“No one has.”

 

“Right.” Here he shifts a little. “And, well, if there’s anything I can do. While I’m here.”

 

Ah.

 

Hamlet leans in and kisses him. “Thank you,” he says or whispers or maybe just thinks, but Horatio kisses him back like he understands.

 

On the brink of sleep, Hamlet thinks that of all the things to distract yourself from your boyfriend going away, solving a murder mystery together is an interesting choice. But it’s not like he isn’t in need of a distraction, and plus: Horatio’s the smartest guy Hamlet knows. Maybe it really will dig something up.

 

✧

 

The first thing would be to check out the shuttle’s black box, but of course it had mysteriously disappeared, assumed destroyed in the explosion but Hamlet guesses Claudius had taken it and destroyed it himself to make sure.

 

And anyway, that would be too easy.

 

The second thing would be to find some evidence of predetermination, aka plans. Hamlet doesn’t really think he had an accomplice, although he’ll keep the possibility in mind. He can’t think of anyone else who even remotely disliked Chief, let alone would be up for committing a murder. So plans it is: maybe he had some kind of timeline, receipts – hell, even a damn journal. He could absolutely be that stupid.

 

Whatever it turns out to be, Horatio decides the first step would be to break into his quarters. Hamlet quite likes rebellious Horatio, especially in this context: it’s like extreme kindness.

 

To get past the fingerprint scanner they would of course need a fingerprint. (Horatio draws the line at cutting off a finger.)

 

Hamlet makes the executive decision not to involve anyone but the two of them, namely Guil and Ros. He still doesn’t know entirely where they stand with Claudius, and doesn’t particularly want to find out if they actually do think he’s a nutcase. Denial’s not just a river, etc. If he had though, he would’ve asked one of them to do this first bit, because he sure as hell didn’t want to.

 

He starts to doubt himself in the elevator down to engineering. This is making it real, really _real._ Does he really want to go through with this? What if his brain’s been lying to him this entire time?

 

But then he remembers that night in the shuttle with Mason and the way he had yelled and yelled _He’s right there! Can’t you see him? He’s standing right there!_ – and boom.

 

The doors open and the plain corridor looms before him, inexplicably menacing despite being the exact same sight as every deck of the ship. This thought passive-aggressively makes him step forward and start walking.

 

 _Everything’s fine_ , he thinks. _Everything’s okay_. _Horatio’s just a few decks up waiting for you. This’ll be over before it’s begun._

 

The doors to engineering whoosh open as one of the assistant crew walks out with a stack of files in their arms; he would assume they’re headed to lunch except from what he remembers time works differently down here, and no one ever seems to go on break. (The bridge insists on their breaks, even if they’re in mid-sentence when the clock strikes whatever it is – they’re out of there. It’s a matter of principal, and laziness, and Hamlet is particularly grateful today that no one thinks to question him scampering off the moment his lunch hour starts.) The ensign almost knocks into Hamlet and they do that awkward dance, and then when he’s finally dodged his way out of the situation he finds he’s danced right into the room.

 

It’s like a punch in the face.

 

He hadn’t anticipated he wouldn’t just feel hate for this place. He used to be down here all the time, whenever he wasn’t on duty really, and a fair amount of time when he was. He used to bring down hot drinks and rest the cups on the control panel over there until Chief noticed and blew his top. He used to lean on the railings by Experimental holding a million types of spanner while Chief worked on the loose panelling. He used to squeeze under the Port-Slider when the wiring conked out and Chief would pull him out by the legs whenever he needed something. He spent more time in here than his own room. And then that too was taken away.

 

“Hamlet,” a voice interrupts, thankfully, in spite of whose voice it turns out to be.

 

“Claudius,” he greets him. He turns and clears his throat, forcing himself to focus on the man instead of literally anything else in the room that might set him off. He’s holding some weird metal object Hamlet can’t identify and finds he doesn’t care, which almost sets him off after all because he would’ve cared once.

 

“What do I owe the pleasure?” Claudius drawls, and Hamlet wants to throw up.

 

 _Get it over with, idiot, then you can go_.

 

“I have. I have something from the Captain,” he manages to say, and it’s only then he remembers the file in his hand.

 

Horatio had mocked up a fake Request form, because it’s the most innocuous type of thing to sign. Hamlet used to fill them in for Chief a couple of times a year – he knows how engineers are always desperate for some piece of equipment or other.

 

He hands the file over, pen already attached to the cover so Hamlet doesn’t contaminate it. Claudius takes it in his free hand, and when he flips it open he takes a few steps to the left and puts the weird object he’s holding on a work surface so he can unhook the pen.

 

“This is odd, I did one of these only about a month ago,” he says, and Hamlet’s heart would drop except he’s already filling it out. His bet had paid off: engineers are needy creatures.

 

“I think she said something about sending them out more regularly,” he bullshits.

 

“Good,” Claudius says gruffly, scribbling rapidly now. Hamlet realises he’ll probably have to relay some of this to the Captain so there isn’t a ruckus. That or, from the amount he’s putting down, the Helsingør’s on the brink of breaking down and Claudius isn’t telling anyone.

 

In a few minutes it seems he’s done, and flips shut the folder to hand back to him. It appears to have one extremely smoothly until he goes to put the pen in his own front pocket.

 

“Oh, uh—” Hamlet says. “I— need that back, if you don’t mind.”

 

“What?”

 

“The pen.”

 

Claudius looks at the pen in his raised hand. It’s not a special pen. It is in fact completely normal, which doesn’t help things.

 

“O…kay,” Claudius says.

 

“It’s all a new budgeting thing,” Hamlet blurts out. “Can’t let people— take office supplies. Gotta keep track of everything— so we can spend more on the— you know, important stuff. Like,” and here he flips open the file and tries to read Claudius’ terrible cursive, “…gentry…fritractors?” He’s really lost his touch – he has no idea what that is.

 

Claudius seems to approve, or at least not care, and hands him back the pen. Too late, Hamlet realises he’s gonna end up touching it after all and tries to manoeuvre out of it and of course, fails. The pen falls to the floor and Hamlet curses himself, both for making a scene and potentially contaminating the print anyway. He picks it up with two fingers at the nib end while Claudius looks on judgementally.

 

“Germs,” Hamlet says.

 

“Lovely to see you as always, Hamlet,” he says, and to Hamlet’s immense relief he’s turning away, back to his stupid metal thing, Hamlet already forgotten.

 

He almost runs back to the elevator and has a minor panic attack when the doors shut until some junior crewmembers board and he pulls himself together.

 

Back in his room, Horatio is sitting at the desk, still on the same page he’d been writing when Hamlet left a few minutes ago. That, more than anything else, makes him feel better.

 

“Don’t ever make me do that again,” he says, both of them fully aware it had been his own idea. He rolls the pen down the file and onto the desk before Horatio and collapses on his bed.

 

“You did well,” Horatio says, and reaches over to stroke his hair briefly before taking up the pen and starts extracting a print.

 

✧

 

They agree to break in that evening, during Hamlet’s dinner hour when Claudius would still be at work.

 

Hamlet keeps watch while Horatio holds the fake fingerprint up to the scanner on a stick of rubber. The door lets them through and Hamlet could kiss him, and after this horrible business is over with, he’ll do just that – but for now, evidence.

 

Horatio goes through his desk meticulously, careful to replace everything as it had been. Hamlet searches the cupboards, under the bed, the nightstand, the nooks in the walls, all the classic secret hiding spots in standard Federation bedrooms.

 

They work silently and quickly. Horatio takes pictures of a few sheets of paper; Hamlet finds nothing but some pieces of junk that look like broken equipment and a lot of stashed credit redeem cards that Claudius had evidently collected, or in other words: stolen. They leave within fifteen minutes, Hamlet dejected.

 

“This was a stupid idea,” he announces from under the arm he’d thrown over his face. Horatio’s sat in his desk chair swiping through the pictures he took. He glances up at Hamlet on the bed.

 

“It might not be,” he says.

 

“We won’t find anything. He’s not that much of an idiot, unfortunately. He got hired here, after all.”

 

“Well, maybe not,” Horatio mutters.

 

“Huh?”

 

“Look at this.” He holds out the computer pad with one of the photographs onscreen. “I thought it was strange he had a copy of his own file.”

 

Hamlet takes the pad and skims over the picture. “I mean, it just looks like incomprehensible qualifications to me. I’ve never heard of half these places.”

 

“Exactly.”

 

“Just ‘cause we don’t know them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

 

“True, but look at this one,” – Horatio points to the bottom of the screen – “That PhD code doesn’t exist. All PhD codes in North Alpha start with 01935.”

 

Hamlet sits up and brings the pad closer to his face. “How do you even know that?”

 

“I did one.”

 

“When did you go to North Alpha?”

 

“I’ve studied in a lot of places. It doesn’t matter, just trust me.”

 

Hamlet hums, and finally looks up at him. “So what, though? Maybe someone just got the code wrong.”

 

“It’s automated, but okay, let’s say they did– look at the dates. Apparently he did it in a year.”

 

Hamlet didn’t expect to be the one to trash all the potential ideas, but today’s got him down. “Maybe he’s smarter than we anticipated.”

 

“Okay, let’s say that too,” Horatio says, getting out of his chair and coming to sit next to Hamlet on the bed. He points finger at the end of a line of text. “But look at the Head Coordinator.”

 

“Shgen?”

 

“I can name five Shgens off the top of my head. It’s an incredibly common name. I bet you if I looked up Shgens at this place, this… Vriska Institute, there’d be at least a dozen.”

 

Hamlet gestures for him to go ahead, so Horatio takes back the pad and searches the name in the data system. After a few seconds, Horatio jumps in triumph.

 

“There’s fifteen! Look, Hamlet, don’t you see – this goes in just enough circles to confuse someone into giving him the benefit of the doubt. Wrong codes, wrong professor names, wrong dates…”

 

“What does any of it matter though?” Hamlet interrupts. “I’m, I’m sorry, Horatio, you’re doing a really good job, I just. Everyone’s lied on their resume. This isn’t even relevant to— you know.”

 

Beside him, Horatio grows still. “I’m just trying to find something. Help,” he says quietly.

 

“You _are_ helping,” Hamlet insists. “I don’t want this to be a fight, I’m just so tired, and so— I don’t know if we’ll be able to find anything on the guy.”

 

“We might,” Horatio says, meeting his eyes. “We’ve just got to look.”

 

✧

 

“So we’ve got to find motive and method too, so the evidence makes sense. Character evidence too, if there is any,” Horatio’s saying as he paces around his quarters, Bernardo perched on his shoulder. Hamlet’s finding himself quite into law-enforcing Horatio as well as law-breaking. Maybe he’s just into Horatio.

 

“Is it character evidence that he’s an asshole?” Hamlet asks unironically, but Horatio smiles, which he takes to mean no. “Well, the method seems to be obvious. He caused an explosion on the shuttle, didn’t he? That’s what Fort thinks, and he’s the expert.”

 

“Okay, so an explosion,” Horatio nods along. “Unless, of course…”

 

That doesn’t bear thinking about.

 

“If Claudius did anything to him before the explosion we have no evidence anyway.”

 

“So how would he go about creating an explosion? Tampering with the shuttle?”

 

“Wouldn’t that put him in danger too?”

 

“It would have to be controlled.”

 

“A bomb?”

 

“Are controlled bombs… a thing?”

 

“I mean, yeah. The intensity can be adjusted, it just might take a while to figure out exactly.”

 

“Oh. Oh, and he’d have the time and space to do that, wouldn’t he?”

 

“Most handmade bombs can be created from everyday components.”

 

“And he has free reign on the whole of engineering’s stock.”

 

“So we won’t be able to find any proof of unusual purchases, will we?”

 

“Probably not.”

 

It didn’t look good.

 

The motive comes to Hamlet in a sort of epiphany. He wakes Horatio in the middle of the night and hisses to him, “He faked his way onto the Helsingør to get the Captain!”

 

“What?” Horatio mumbles sleepily.

 

“He must’ve heard how Chief was offered First Officer without even having a position on the bridge! He wanted an easy way to the top!”

 

“Okay?” Horatio says. He rubs his eyes and squints at Hamlet. “You’re probably right, but how would we prove that?”

 

“We can’t! We can’t prove a fucking thing, because he didn’t account for the fact that Chief was offered that position because he was fucking good at his job and everyone liked him besides! He failed completely!”

 

“Great,” Horatio replies after a beat.

 

Hamlet flops back down onto his pillow and glares at the ceiling with all the force of negative adrenaline. His heart is beating at a hundred miles a second.

 

He’s starting to get a picture of the whole thing, after months of avoiding ruminating.

 

He didn’t like what he saw at all.


	10. week ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the days go by and start to blur together, Hamlet loses the drive he'd had when Horatio suggested they do this, one built on a hope that fades a little more with every dead end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! so lets all just pretend by sunday i meant... this sunday... and not a week ago... :/ life came at me hard, but this is the last leg i had to heavy-edit so the end is very much in sight!! 
> 
> ive also decided to slap in a prologue but im not sure if i'll be posting that until after my uni deadlines, so i'll just warn you for now :P
> 
> hope you enjoy!

It quickly becomes apparent there are very few avenues to go down with no witnesses and no evidence. Horatio takes to trawling through similar cold cases in the data web, and Hamlet himself pinballs from reading engineering manuals to compiling an ever-growing and increasingly irrelevant shipwide timeline of the day Chief died. He thinks he might be accidentally recreating some kind of Medieval Earth torture system, except it's on himself so who gives a shit, right?

 

None of these seem to go anywhere; as the days go by and start to blur together, Hamlet loses the drive he'd had when Horatio suggested they do this, one built on a hope that fades a little more with every dead end. He starts to resent the whole thing for sapping their precious time together, but Horatio is determined to help, and he's in his element like this: every time he glances up to smile at Hamlet from his desk, three files deep and a pen behind each ear, Hamlet just smiles back and wishes that were him, successfully distracted. 

 

Horatio makes sure they keep doing their usual things, the movies and viewdecks and dinners - being with Horatio is his standard way of being now, his normal: it's not an effort to do these things - but everything else starts to slip. He doesn't realise how much he'd been isolating himself, and by extension Horatio, until Rosencrantz pointedly asks him to hang out, something he's never had to do because they do it so naturally.

 

Well, what Ros actually does is tell him they're going to see a movie, and that if Hamlet doesn't come he'll report him for insubordination.

 

After a long pause, he goes for what he assumes his usual response would be. "You're... not my superior."

 

"I'm older than you," Rosencrantz fires back, like that means anything to anyone except siblings, which they may as well be. The arguing is familiar, and Hamlet falls into step with it; in his exhausted state he'll admit it's nice to be worried about. More than that though, it's worrying that he's being worried about: every question is a step closer to uncovering his stupid, stupid new hobby, and thence suspension from Starfleet.

 

He counters, "So it's your decrepit word against mine - who'd believe you over me?"

 

"Literally everyone. Come on," and with that he pulls Hamlet out of his helmseat and towards the elevator.

 

So Hamlet goes.

 

Horatio and Fortinbras are already settled in the back row of the cinema, Fort with his feet propped up on the seat in front, Horatio beside him looking like he's been assigned popcorn holding duty. It's jarringly domestic, or not that: normal. It makes him swallow something down, anyway. 

 

Ros pushes him towards them, and is quickly distracted by a sudden Guil brandishing a drinks tray. Hamlet makes his way to Horatio and sits next to him. The low lighting is making him even more tired, but he reaches over for some popcorn as he greets them in a calculated move to prolong the unnatural normalcy. He hasn't decided how far he's gonna go with pretending everything's fine, if there's any point to it at all. This whole premise is an acknowledgement of the not-quite-right. They've only been here all together maybe three times, even before Horatio - because Guilly talks through movies, and Fort steals armrests, and Ros guesses twists, and Hamlet admittedly tends to stress-eat everyone's food - but everyone seems to be on their suspiciously best behaviour; Fort even listens to Ros when he tells him to take his blasted feet down.

 

They watch some Vulcan EmotionEx film about a guy who can see the future but somehow doesn't see his life going to hell. Horatio curls up into his arm the further they get into it, and Ros takes it upon himself to poke Guil in the ribs every time she threatens to say something (in exchange for her doing the same to him). Hamlet does find himself relaxing. Horatio absently rubs circles in his arm with his thumb.

 

Everything works out for the Vulcan guy, and by the time the auto-light brightens when the credits start, Hamlet feels like if he went to bed right now, he might actually fall asleep. His friends don't let him, of course.

 

Guil drags him to the level's viewdeck (thankfully not 6) while Horatio is lured after them with Fort's witty repartee about mangible linearity or something. On arrival, he's placed on a bench and they all settle around him. He realises extremely belatedly what specifically is going on.

 

"Is this an intervention?"

 

"It's whatever you want it to be," Guildenstern says a la Polonious.

 

_Ah, shit._ "I think I want it to not be at all."

 

"See, arguing is the only time you act normal," Ros points out.

 

"Autopilot," Hamlet replies, on autopilot, and then cringes at his own admission.

 

Horatio is quiet beside him, and Hamlet doesn't want to look over just yet. He has the feeling Horatio's glad the guys are doing this, are there for him like this, even if it's logistically awkward. Really, it would've been a nice gesture if he didn't plan to keep them all out of it.

 

"Well, uh. What do you want?" he prompts them.

 

"What's best for you!" Guil pipes up, and Fort rolls his eyes.

 

"And what would that be?"

 

"Talking it out."

 

"It?"

 

"To put it bluntly, " Fortinbras breaks in, "what is wrong with you, Hamlet? Or rather, as your medical professional I can see what's wrong, but _why_."

 

What's he meant to say now?

 

He aches to tell the truth, just be out with it, but the three of them would just take it as further evidence that he's unhinging. At best he could be compassionately suspended. At worst he could be sent back to Earth and never fly again. 

 

He looks up at his friends.

 

"Nothing," he lies.

 

"Bullshit," Guildenstern calls. "Did you really think that'd work?"

 

Hamlet sighs. "No, I mean. Sometimes nothing has to happen to... you know."

 

It's something of a trump card, and Hamlet kind of hates using it like this, but it's still true, and a good life lesson to know. It'll just have to plant the seed for when nothing happens for _real_ next time, and maybe they won't spring a fucking support group meeting on him for getting depressed.

 

There's a collective pause, and then Guil is saying, "Shit, man, I'm sorry. 'Course not."

 

"It's fine," he's quick to assure her. "For all you know, there could've been. And things can- exacerbate it, can't they? It's a fair assumption"

 

Ah, back to the 'it'. Everything he can't find himself to say makes its way into an 'it'.

 

Guil plops down on the bench next to him. On the other side, Horatio slips his hand into Hamlet's. Ros perches on a railing opposite and looks guilty.

 

"Is something exacerbating it?" Fort asks. And whoops, Hamlet had forgotten to factor in a) his hawk-eye/ ear, b) his literal job, and c) his general disregard for being polite. As soon as he meets his eye, he knows he's onto him.

 

He can't straight up lie. He'll have to use a different truth.

 

"What do you think could possibly be doing that?" he replies dryly.

 

Horatio squeezes his hand.

 

Somehow, like it was planned, Fort catches it. "Oh," he says.

 

Great, even more pity. 

 

But he'd made his bed; now for the lying.

 

✧

 

Day by day, Rosencrantz keeps on suggesting things to do, seeming to have found a way to bully Hamlet with good intentions. Sometimes he indulges him, sometimes uses his excuses - they're mostly harmless one-hour ventures to help Guil find a bookchip after a shift, or playing chess or hold-seek like they used to. A notable one however is that Hamlet and Horatio take some shoreleave and stay at a base for a few days. Not only notable for being, for lack of a better word being in Hamlet's vernacular, extra, but because apparently the Captain has some stakes in this one.

 

"Are you trying to kidnap me?" he snaps back, and Rosencrantz immediately looks like a gormagander in headlights. They'd been walking towards commons after work, but the realisation halts him abruptly in the middle of the corridor. "I don't need time off, Rosencrantz. That's probably one of the last things I need."

 

"We're all concerned about you," he says, as usual not unlike an order. "Fortinbras could have you suspended, you know: all he'd need is one exam."

 

"So why hasn't he done one?" Hamlet hisses.

 

This seems to catch Ros. "He doesn't... we..."

 

"If you want me gone, the only person that says anything about is you."

 

" _I_ don't want it," Ros bites back.

 

Hamlet whirls around from where he'd started to leave. "Then who does?"

 

A heartbeat pause. "The Captain." When Hamlet opens his mouth, he adds, quieter, "You're not well, Hamlet."

 

"I'm _fine_."

 

A conversation from years ago floats into both their minds at that, when Hamlet had quipped at a sulking Guildenstern: _fine is the most personal and most universal conspiracy._

 

✧

 

He's booked for a full medical after the weekend, and into a hotel at the next starbase. He hasn't got enough fight left to argue. 

 

The Captain tries to talk to him between missions, but he rebuffs her as neutrally as he can. Ophelia keeps her distance, but a second weekly session with his therapist shows up on his schedule under her signature. With Guildenstern it's worst. Hamlet hates himself every morning when he replies to her 'good morning' nothing more than in kind. He can't stop rolling it around and around in his head that _if she knew, if she knew_ \- if she knew what he's so stuck on, how he's spending his evenings, he'd lose her entirely. By definition, bridge crewmembers are Starfleet before all else; she's a good officer, so she'd drop him without question for mutiny.

 

Because that's what this is, isn't it?

 

He's committing mutiny.

 

✧

 

Eventually it seems even Horatio starts to doubt the likelihood of turning up anything worthwhile, which is when Hamlet knows they've really lost.

 

"If we don't succeed..." he starts, one night in bed with only the light from under the bathroom door barely reaching them where they're tangled in the sheets. (Bernardo is playing with the towels, to keep him occupied, and give them a bit of peace.)

 

"If you say 'try, try again'," Hamlet murmurs back in distaste. Horatio laughs under his breath.

 

"Well, that's just it. If we... stop 'try, trying again'... would you... mind?"

 

Hamlet doesn't sigh out loud, but in his head he exhales long and soft. "I'd accepted before you even arrived here that I wouldn't find anything on the guy."

 

"But you'd mind?"

 

He chooses his words carefully, treading lightly not to obfuscate from Horatio, but to get out exactly what he means, as he himself understands it. "I would mind that we wasted our last fortnight together on the ship."

 

Horatio hums in response and lolls his head onto Hamlet's chest to look up at him. "Is that what we've been doing? Wasting time?"

 

"Not entirely," Hamlet concedes as he meets his eyes and smiles. "It just feels like it."

 

Horatio looks at him without breaking for a few moments. His neck is arched, lovely and cold, in the dim light like this. 

 

He turns his head away again and they resume gazing at the ceiling together.

 

"Has anyone ever told you you can rewrite the past?"

 

"Are you proposing time travel? 'Cause I'm all for that conversation."

 

Horatio jostles him. "No, not the actual past. The thinking of it."

 

"Hmm?"

 

"We were taught a little about the theory in Astropsych, although there it was on a global scale. It applies to individual lives too, though. The idea is that how one talks about the past, creates it. Planetary history is foremost in memories, then in data."

 

Hamlet ponders this. "So we should all think ourselves into being happy? Deny events? Ignore pain?"

 

"Not exactly," Horatio says. Under the covers, his fingers tickle Hamlet's ribs as they come to rest there. "Feeling doesn't always correlate with fact. That doesn't make them invalid, but sometimes you can... graft them together a little, to ease it."

 

Hamlet narrows his eyes like Horatio can see them like this. "Light of my life, what are you talking about exactly?"

 

Horatio rolls over to commandeer his attention, resting his chin on Hamlet's arm. "Just take this week, for example. In your mind, we wasted it-" (he shushes Hamlet's protests) "-we holed up in our rooms, did pointless work when we could have been doing, well, anything else under the suns; you got threatened with suspension. That's how you feel, right?"

 

"Well, that did all genuinely happen, so I don't see why you're happy about it."

 

"You want to hear how my week went? I worked on something for my partner, which has been fulfilling if not fruitful; I went to see a film with our friends, who are doing everything they can think of to make my partner feel better; I spent every evening with my partner and treasured every second of it; I wrote for my thesis, took pleasant walks, ate good - well, reasonable - food... You see, we had the same week, but in my mind it was nicer."

 

"So you're an optimist."

 

"I suppose."

 

"We didn't have the same week, though: your father figure doesn't haunt you." (Ha.)

 

Horatio looks instantly worried. "Oh God, I'm not trying to erase your experience, Hamlet, not at all."

 

"I know, I know, don't worry."

 

"All I meant is... there's no harm in spinning it a little differently, here. If the idea of this being a waste is on your mind. I, personally, don't feel I've wasted a second of being with you. If we had a do-over, I'd still try to help you, if you wanted me to. I'm only sorry it's hurting you."

 

After a pause where Horatio stretches up to kiss him on the cheek, Hamlet shrugs minutely. "I'd be hurting anyway. May as well use it for something."

 

Fulfilling work, film with friends, evenings, walks, kisses, jokes. Okay. Okay.


	11. week eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Maybe it was just my mind playing tricks again, maybe I’m mad, I don’t care. I think I have something.”

And then he sees a ghost.

 

✧

 

 _The year in 2355. I am on the USS_ Helsingør _. We are exploring the distant stars. I am safe. I am supported. I am in control. The year in 2355. I am on the USS_ Helsingør _. We are exploring the distant stars. I am safe. I am supported. I am in control._

 

He’d left the bridge early when his headache became so bad he couldn’t make out hostile objects in the viewpanel and Acker had to swoop in and save the whole ship from a very fiery death. He’d gone straight to bed and tried to knock himself out with that raw insomniac desperation he knows all too well; so far, he’s failing.

 

Having cycled through a slew of quote-unquote helpful techniques he’d picked up from his long line of counsellors and concerned mentors, he had landed on his very old mantra. He’d had to modify it, since he’s moved several galaxies away since coming up with it, but the gist is the same. _Who am I? Who are you?_

 

 _The year in 2355. I am on the USS_ Helsingør _. We are exploring the distant stars. I am safe. I am supported. I am in control._

 

Naturally it happens during an ‘I am in control’.

 

He hears a gasping suddenly from across the room, and that’s terrifying enough except maybe he’s finally gone actually insane because he _knows_ that gasp – not the person, the actual gasp – he’s heard it before, the ragged intake of breath that falters towards the end: it’s seared into his memory.

 

Hamlet lies stone-still, not even breathing.

 

The gasping continues, and when the pained groaning starts he realises what’s happening.

 

It’s fear that drives him to pull back the covers, but a battling fear: he _wants_ to see him again. Even like this, in the worst circumstance in the world. He might not get to again; last time he’d thought was the last time, after all.

 

He curls into a ball and pulls away one corner of his blanket like a child, and there he is. Chief is sitting clutching his chest, his left arm limp and bleeding. His shirt is torn and bloodied, the hems singed and smoking slightly. His skin is damp with sweat. His eyes have an expression in them Hamlet has only ever seen in him once, and that had been this moment too.

 

He isn’t a ghost in the traditional sense. It’s more like Hamlet is the ghost. He isn’t in his bedroom anymore – he’s on that shuttle. Through the window panel he can see the debris interference from that day, the whirling purple of the sky and the deep green of the moon below. And Chief is on the floor, panting as he tries to stop the bleeding in one of his legs but clearly panicking too much to do anything useful.

 

 _He’s in shock_ , Hamlet thinks. _I’ve never seen him in shock_.

 

“Chief?” he says before he can help himself.

 

Chief looks up at him, but not in surprise. He stares at Hamlet helplessly, and Hamlet feels the worst invisible pain he’s ever felt in his life.

 

Then he starts— not moving, but attempting to move, pulling his body across the shuttle floor with his one good arm, a smear of blood left on the floor behind him. This is longer than last time: Hamlet had crashed the shuttle before he reached this part. He looks on, heart ripped out of his chest, as Chief struggles to move as piece by piece, his body gives out. He’s crawling towards Hamlet, or so Hamlet thinks, until he passes him and continues crawling. Hamlet spins to watch him, stuck to the spot, and that’s when he notices Claudius. He’s by the secondary control panel and the only damage he seems to have on him is a hand-print of blood on his shoulder. Hamlet’s breath stops short in his throat, but he doesn’t seem to know Hamlet is there. Or maybe he’s not there. Either way, he’s busy plumbing in numbers and Chief is crawling towards the far corner. To get away from him?

 

When he gets to the wall he falls against it limply, and awkwardly turns his body to face the room again, his whole frame not cooperating anymore. He’s panting even more from the exertion, and Hamlet can tell from his eyes that he’s nearly gone.

 

But he doesn’t rest; he reaches across his own body and starts stabbing his fingers around on the floor. It’s not until he finds something that Hamlet realises he had been searching.

 

It’s a small semi-spherical blackened object, seeming to be metal and electronics but too burnt to be sure. Chief holds it in his weak grip and starts to turn it, like he’s looking for something on the surface.

 

“Oh my God,” Hamlet breathes.

 

He seems to find what he wants and presses his thumb into it. The shuttle bleaches white and there’s a deafening crack and then Hamlet is alone in the dark again, curled in a ball, tears streaming down his face.

 

✧

 

“You don’t have to believe me this time,” he insists. “The theory was out there anyway, but the fucking—hallucinations? You don’t have to think they were real. I’m not… I’m not sure _I_ do,” he lies.

 

Horatio doesn’t say anything, or perhaps it’s that Hamlet doesn’t give him time to.

 

“But it doesn’t matter,” he continues rapidly: he’s talking so fast he’s tripping over his own words. “Maybe it was just my mind playing tricks again, maybe I’m mad, I don’t care. I think I have something.”

 

“Yeah?” Horatio says softly.

 

“Yeah,” he replies. “We’re gonna have to get back into that room.”

 

This time Hamlet knows exactly where to look. He pulls out the box of junk he’d found last time and pours it onto the bed.

 

“What are we looking for?” Horatio asks him, but he barely hears.

 

If it isn’t in there, Hamlet’s gonna give up. He’d already mostly given up; he just needs to check one final time before signing it off forever. No pressure.

 

He sifts through the scrappy pieces of plastic and metal, some of them smithed out of shape, some with rugged edges from being sawn through. It looks like a reject box, or a really bad batch from Experimental. The pile gets smaller and smaller and Hamlet’s hope wanes, until he shakes a heavy cube wrapped in wires and something fell out.

 

It’s shiny and round, and has all the clips for circuitry but none left on it.

 

Hamlet tries to picture the object in Chief’s hand, and lines it up in his mind with this one. If you polished away the burns—

 

“Oh my God,” he says again, this time in the quiet of the room, Horatio peering in next to him. He holds it out for Horatio to take. “This is it, Horatio. This is what killed him.”

 

✧

 

“It was poorly made, that’s all: it was meant to kill Chief and it barely injured him. So they fought until Claudius left him for dead, and then Chief set it off in hopes of killing them both. He only half succeeded there. It was still a faulty bomb. Claudius survived; Chief was dying anyway.”

 

“And you know this because his ghost told you?” Guildenstern asks.

 

“No, because I found it.”

 

“Holy shit,” she breathes. “Really?”

 

“Yeah, and I need you to take a look at it, in your capacity as former assistant to Yame on the Liberty.”

 

“Ooh, okay.” She takes it eagerly when Hamlet hands it over.

 

They’re in her quarters, after hours. Horatio is in his own rooms, hurriedly compiling everything they found in the data systems, and Hamlet thought he should do this alone anyway.

 

After a few silent minutes of examination she glances up and asks, faux-casually, “So why didn’t you tell me what you two were doing?”

 

Hamlet tries to live up to his own rule for the first time in a while. It helps that Guil’s concentration stays on the bomb, her quick fingers assessing, analysing, deciding his fate. “Honestly? I didn’t think you’d believe me until we found something.”

 

“Well, going on about apparitions and things isn’t exactly conducive to a sanity plea,” she replies. She looks up again and smiles through her frown.

 

“Mm.”

 

“I should have. Believed you, I mean. Without questioning it. I hope I would have.”

 

“You’re good at your job, you would’ve questioned it. I’d question it if _you_ decided to commit mutiny.”

 

“But I should trust you in these things. I _do_ trust you. I’m a bad friend.”

 

“If I’d been wrong, about… about Claudius – it would’ve been the right thing to not indulge my revenge fantasies.”

 

“But you’re not wrong it seems,” she says. Hamlet can almost visibly see the reality sinking in for her as her analysis comes to a halt, her fingers stilling. She rolls the semi-sphere onto one palm and holds it before herself like a toasting glass. “It’s a bomb. Seems to have been made of scrap and detonated several times. Has some circuitry missing. And it’s completely clean.”

 

“A clean, detonated bomb.”

 

“Precisely.”

 

“That he couldn’t get rid of because it would get found in disposal.”

 

“Or transporter checks.”

 

“Precisely.”

 

“Thank you, Guil. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

 

“I’m sorry you felt you couldn’t.” She whistles and leans back in her chair. “This is gonna be big, dude. You’re sure you have enough to go on? Trials are for the guilty, as Professor Amcros used to say.”

 

Hamlet almost laughs. “Oh, he’s guilty. If he gets away with this, the Captain can lock me up on that starbase until I die, I don’t care. Even if I lose my job, the ship… Claudius has to go down with me.”

 

Guildenstern grins at him. “I hope he fucking rots.”

 

✧

 

All officers will be in attendance, plus the Captain, plus a neutral ambassador who by good luck is staying on the Helsingør that week. Hamlet had shown up at the Captain’s personal quarters, somewhere he’d never been under implication of instant execution, and ordered a trial for the following morning, case: first degree murder, the prosecuted: her chief engineer. He doesn’t register her expression for fear it would make him take it back; he’s in and out in two minutes, and hurries to Horatio’s room, trying not to look over his shoulder.

 

_I_ _am safe. I am supported. I am in control._

 

Two out of three isn’t bad.

 

(Even if it’s more like one out of three.)

 

Just twelve more hours. For better or worse, this’ll all be over in twelve hours. He holds Horatio particularly tightly tonight, and every tiny noise makes him startle. Bernardo sits at his feet, sound asleep, and Hamlet finds it strangely comforting. It’s not like he’d be much use if Claudius broke in and pointed a phaser at them.

 

He reminds himself that Claudius doesn’t know he knows yet. He hadn’t been anticipating Hamlet being able to see the dead.


	12. week twelve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He could just collapse, right here before the Captain; it’s like he’s been floating for months and has suddenly been slammed back down to Earth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey folks! so here we are, finally the final chapter...
> 
> this whole fic has been a kind of challenge for myself to step out of my comfort zone a bit and ive had a blast writing it and learning from it, so i just wanted to say thank you for coming along for the ride and i hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> stay tuned for an epilogue-type oneshot sometime soon, but otherwise this is me signing off :D

The look in Claudius’ eyes when he’s called to the stand throws out all of Hamlet’s remaining doubts. He has no trouble saying his piece, and Claudius’ carefully neutral face becomes more and more enraged as the evidence tumbles out before him. Hamlet explains in perfectly rehearsed order: motive, method, evidence. Simple.

 

And Claudius seems floored.

 

The relief almost burns through him, the vindication, the knowledge that he hadn’t been making it all up in his head – that he’d been _right,_ he’d known Chief well enough to see there was something up. He could just collapse, right here before the Captain; it’s like he’s been floating for months and has suddenly been slammed back down to Earth.

 

“What have you got to say in response to these claims?” the Captain asks Claudius when Hamlet is through. She looks tougher than she’s ever looked, and that’s saying something. Her expression is also carefully neutral, but her hands, clasped together on the table before her, give her away. She’s upset, which means she believes Hamlet, and knows she’s been betrayed.

 

“Well, they’re frankly ridiculous, sir,” Claudius retorts. He smiles uneasily, going for a scoff but looking too pained for it to work. “Why would I ever do such heinous things? For a job? No offence, sir, but I could get a job anywhere; I wouldn’t have to kill for it.”

 

The Captain turns her eyes to Hamlet for his answer. He swallows. “We found his file. His academic records. He’d pulled it from the system. I—”

 

“I have a copies here,” Horatio takes over. He’s been leaving the talking to Hamlet, only interjecting to back him up when needed, and Hamlet notices he looks rather pale and uncomfortable. Well, this _is_ uncomfortable, but he looks kind of ill. He tries to catch his eye but Horatio refuses to look at him, and that’s when he realises something might actually be up. He’d been kind of weird all morning.

 

Horatio hands a copy to the Captain and keeps another in the folder in his hand.

 

“I noticed some discrepancies, a few errors. It seems Claudius has lied about his past.”

 

“Nonsense!” Claudius interrupts. “Captain—”

 

“Proceed, Horatio,” the Captain says. She looks up from the document and nods at him once. Hamlet always seems to forget they’re great friends or something; that isn’t something he can fully decipher.

 

“Two degrees were never awarded, two professors don’t exist, one institution has several entries in the same database. Three minor positions had odd confidentiality policies that shouldn’t have applied to his rank.”

 

Claudius tries to interrupt again: “That doesn’t mean I’ve—”

 

“You’re right,” Horatio agrees. “It doesn’t.” He pauses for quite a long time, long enough for the Captain to look up at him for another indeterminable silent exchange. He clears his throat and looks back at Claudius. “But then I did some digging on one of these minor positions.”

 

Hamlet’s confused. They hadn’t discussed this, but then they hadn’t really talked about the file after they found it. He hadn’t even realised Horatio had looked into it further – he thought the confusion was going to be the point. But he trusts Horatio to know what he’s doing. Maybe they even did go over this, and he’d forgotten.

 

“It says here you worked as assistant crew on the USS Polaris in 2335,” Horatio continues, and Hamlet can tell from his voice that he’s nervous. He has the right to be, from the way Claudius’ face falls at the name, whatever it means. “But the USS Polaris was retired in 2331. I won’t question that you worked there until that point, but I wondered why you wanted your time there to eat up those four years.”

 

Claudius had given up looking neutral and was getting red in the face, his mouth a hard line.

 

“It turns out, records find you elsewhere,” Horatio says. “It finds you in Delta Quadrant, aca.556, Jkarl’la Space, Zone 34. Jail Town.”

 

Claudius’ jaw has dropped, not to mention several of the spectators.

 

He splutters, “How… how would you even know…? If that was true? Those records don’t exist. You can’t have proof of that.”

 

Horatio smiles coldly. “But I do have proof. Because I worked there too.”

 

✧

 

All hell breaks loose after that.

 

Claudius is put in the brig, yelling about his rights while no one listens. The Captain calls a holomeeting with the Admirals back at the Academy, which people can hear through the walls from down the corridor. The relief bridge crew take over and Rosencrantz and Guil and the others crowd into commons to try and figure out what the fuck just happened.

 

Horatio slips out of the room during the hubbub and heads to the Science Garden, and Hamlet follows on his heels, completely baffled by the recent turns of events and not wanting to hear it from anyone else.

 

They sit on their usual bench, overlooking the gently swaying bushes of flowers. It’s always the same time of day in here, mid-afternoon or mid-morning, whenever the sun is almost at its highest but has the sense of going somewhere, of movement.

 

Horatio sits at the far end of the bench. Hamlet takes that as a cue to sit at the far other.

 

“’Ratio?” he says softly, after what feels like forever.

 

“I get it if you hate me,” Horatio starts with, which: what.

 

“Huh? I couldn’t ever _hate_ you,” Hamlet counters. “Just— look at me. Please?”

 

A long moment passes, but Horatio does turn to look at him. He looks really rough, but then Hamlet wouldn’t look much better if he’d just broken an oath of silence under a court-ordered oath of truth.

 

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

 

“You weren’t allowed, idiot.”

 

Horatio smiles weakly. “You’re taking this very well.”

 

“I think it’s the adrenaline,” he returns the smile. “Look, I… Can you… tell me everything? From what I gathered you just broke the bureaucratic damn, right? Can I know?”

 

“Everything?”

 

“Please.”

 

Horatio exhales, and then he starts to talk.

 

✧

 

“It’s… not exactly a book I’ve been writing. It’s a proposition I’m going to submit to the Federation to unseal the records in Zone 34. There’s a guild of scholars on Blackdog that have information I’ve been after for a while now – that why I’m going there. I’ve been working on this case for nearly a decade. It’s so… vast and upsetting. I had no idea Claudius was involved until I looked into his file. I can’t believe I spent three months eating in the same room as that monster, completely clueless.”

 

“What… what happened? On Jail Town?” Hamlet asks tentatively. “I thought I’d heard the name before when you accidentally told me, that time on shoreleave. I couldn’t remember why, though.”

 

Horatio laughs shakily. “It’s lucky you didn’t. If you’d started asking questions about it, or God-forbid actually found out I’d been there undercover, I would’ve been beamed out and had to take a different passenger ship. You probably didn’t realise how bad it was at the time, but Gertrude gave me a real kicking.”

 

“The _Captain’s_ in on this?”

 

“She knows what I’ve been doing. She isn’t too happy about it, with the risking of my life and all.”

 

“I can’t say I am either,” Hamlet says. “Seriously, though. What happened?”

 

Horatio shifts in his seat. “I’ll save you the details. If this succeeds they’ll be public record at some point anyway. The short of it is… well, in 2330 a private buyer purchased the planet. Nothing unusual there, but then by the end of the year it was gaining some attention in the wrong kinds of circles. There were rumours of… experiments going on there. On lifeforms. I was something of a nomad before Vektar; at the time I was writing about the Galley Trials and hopping around Delta trying to get people to talk. I heard about it several times in several shady places before I decided to go. Gertrude didn’t want me to, but when I didn’t give in, she funded a new identity and the whole trip there, the entire two year deal.

 

“The rumours were completely right. It was sickening. Like some kind of horror story. They were… mechanic experiments. Attempts to meld body and machine. The— the residents— of Jail Town, they were thought to have all expatriated but it turns out— well, I’m sure you can fucking guess. People weren’t exactly running to sign up for it.”

 

“Holy fuck,” Hamlet breathes, and Horatio raises his eyebrows in agreement and steels himself.

 

“So I stayed for six months, and then I fled to Vektar, and then I realised the records were completely hidden from the public. I tried to take it up in Federation high court but it was too dangerous to do anything while it was in operation. I would just be getting myself and many others killed. And then in ’35 the planet was filed as private uninhabited space and the records sealed for good. I don’t know what happened. I’m hoping they gave up and didn’t just move on to the next planet, but I have no way of knowing. As far as I know I’m the only one from the outside who’s ever been there, the only one who would ever speak up about it. I know what it’s like not being believed.”

 

Hamlet reaches over and takes his hand, squeezing it tightly.

 

“So that’s me,” Horatio finishes awkwardly. “Sorry I didn’t tell you. I hated lying to you.”

 

It’s such a trivial thing to be on his mind it’s almost laughable. In fact, for want of a better reaction, Hamlet goes with: “ _I_ can’t believe you were a— what were you, a… professor slash cop?”

 

Horatio smiles in relief. “Something like that.”

 

“That’s hot.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

“And I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

 

“Thank you,” Horatio says quietly, and Hamlet pulls him in for a hug.

 

_God, what a day_. And what a secret double-life his boyfriend seemed to lead.

 

They sit wrapped up in each other for a few minutes before a thought occurs to Hamlet.

 

“Are we all gonna have to sign vows of silence until you’re done?”

 

“Probably. If anyone outside that room knows what I’m working on, this whole thing goes up in the air, and it’s the only chance we have of enforcing justice.”

 

“But you told me,” Hamlet points out smugly.

 

“Yeah, because I’m an idiot in love,” Horatio bites back. “ It’s only for perhaps a month now, at least. I’m close. Claudius was sort of a breakthrough; the Blackdog files are the only things left now I have a perpetrator.”

 

He’s still riding high on the trial, and this breaking news, and the fact that throughout these first two things Horatio had been there with him. He wouldn’t have been able to convict Claudius without him. He certainly wouldn’t have survived to see him come to trial, even if he had.

 

And this? Well, in a way it’s hardly a surprise Horatio’s been trying to save the world on the down-low. Hamlet had this vague, librarian-y sense of what he did on Vektar, but this suits him even more. It’s actually kind of odd that Hamlet unquestioningly thought Horatio, who was so ready to personally fist-fight the guy who killed Hamlet’s mentor, had spent his entire adult life at a desk.

 

_Hang on._

 

“Hang on. The 2330s?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“As in, fourteen years ago.

 

“Um.”

 

“When you were what, fifteen.”

 

Horatio’s gone red. “Uh, well.”

 

Hamlet pulls back. “Oh no. Is there something else?”

 

“Kind of?” Horatio gets out. “I was, uh, hoping to give you some time between this thing and that thing—”

 

“Tell me now.”

 

“—but I can see this won’t, um. So, the thing is.”

 

“Yes?”

 

Horatio looks away, unsubtly, to watch the trees at the back of the room drop leaves and then have the leaves whisked back up by old-school Evergreen science to reattach to the branches.

“The thing is, I’m not exactly human.”

 

“ _What,”_ Hamlet screeches.

 

“I’m an Angian Decollate.”

 

“ _What?_ What! But I’ve seen you! I’ve seen— I know you _very_ well, you’re absolutely human!”

 

“Remember I mentioned identities?”

 

“Oh my God, I can’t take this right now,” Hamlet collapses into the bench. “You better not be fucking around here, dude.”

 

“I promise you I’m not,” Horatio insists, turning to look at him imploringly. “It’s not all that big of a deal, really—”

 

“It kinda is!”

 

“Okay, yeah, well. I mean. If you found out I wasn’t Terran you might’ve jeopardised it. My Angian form is the one I had to change before I went into Zone 34 and then again after I came _back_ so I couldn’t be traced.”

 

“I think I have whiplash.”

 

“The only difference really is the physical aspect! Also I age a bit slower than you. Like— dog years to cat years. Not quite Vulcan.”

 

“Can you show me?”

 

“Show what?”

 

“You, idiot. Can I see… the real you?”

 

“I haven’t been like that for years.”

 

“You must miss it then.”

 

 “If anyone found out, my life’s work is down the drain. I shouldn’t even be telling you, not yet.”

 

“You better not tell anyone else then.”

 

“Hamlet. You won’t like me when I’m like that. It’ll be different.”

 

“Try me.”

 

Horatio surveys his face for a lengthy moment.

 

“My quarters. Now.”

 

✧

 

As if his day can’t get any more absurd, his boyfriend is apparently a head in a jar.

 

Okay, that’s probably incredibly rude, and it’s not entirely accurate anyway. True, he’s a brain, and true, that brain is encased in a sort of clear sac, but if anything he’s more like a jellyfish. He has tendrils reaching down to the ground from where his brain hovers about a metre in the air (Hamlet’s pleased that he’s still taller than Horatio). They’re a light blue, and have glowing shimmers all along them. They’re beautiful.

 

“My love, where are your eyes?”

 

“I don’t really… have eyes, as such,” Horatio admits. “It’s more like… my head is a giant eye.”

 

“Ah. And your mouth?”

 

“Essentially the same thing. I told you you’d hate me like this.”

 

“I don’t hate you! Far from it. I think you look dashing.”

 

Horatio hums, embarrassed. One of his tendrils shimmers a little brighter, which Hamlet takes to mean he’s blushing.

 

Suddenly Horatio glitches, and then his human self is standing in front of Hamlet again. He wrings his arm and cricks his neck. “God, I don’t miss not having hands.”

 

Hamlet takes on of the aforementioned hands. “Just to check, you’re not, um, ancient are you?”

 

“Oh, _no_ , no. I _am_ actually twenty eight in Ang years. We just have longer years.”

 

“Cool. So it’s not weird, us…?”

 

“Don’t see why. Unless you— do you have a problem with any of this? Because that’s fine, I totally understand – its all been a bit deceiving of me to even start—”

 

“Horatio, Horatio – this has all been very weird, but you said it yourself: it doesn’t have to change anything. It just makes your job twenty times more interesting and admirable. Not that I know you have a real job, of course.”

 

“Sorry for the whiplash.”

 

“This is barely the strangest news I’ve heard all day.”

 

“Cheap third-act twist,” Horatio grins, and Hamlet reels him in for another kiss.

 

✧

 

Horatio’s last day on the Helsingør is very tearful. He gets forced into a suffocating group hug with the whole bridge crew and ends up having to wipe other people’s tears off his cheeks.

 

“I’ll miss Bernardo,” Guil sniffles, tickling the tribble as it squeaks loudly. “And you, of course, Horatio, but less so.”

 

Horatio nods understandingly and grins back at her.

 

“Thanks for making Hamlet insufferable,” Ros says, shaking his hand enthusiastically.

 

“Anytime, and I mean that,” he replies.

 

“You sure I can’t give you a job?” Ophelia asks one last time, and Horatio declines one last time, and she pats his shoulder forlornly, barely missing swatting Bernardo to the floor, undoubtedly deliberately.

 

“Hope all goes well for you,” Acker says. “You did a good thing, helping take that bastard Claudius down.”

 

“Thank you, but I can’t say it was really me…”

 

“Yeah, cheers for proving my whole department seems to be a crack in the department,” Laertes butts in cheerfully. “I’d fire myself if I could.”

 

“I could,” Ophelia offers, and Laertes shoots her a death-glare.

 

“You’ve been better for Hamlet than anything I’ve ever done,” Fort says gruffly. “Thank you for—oh, hell.” He pulls Horatio in for a hug. “You’ve been good for all of us. And I hope we returned the favour at least a little.

 

Horatio hugs him back. “You have, all of you. Although I can’t say I knew you cared, Doctor.”

 

Fortinbras steps back and wipes a tear from his eye. “Emotions are overrated.”

 

Horatio smiles back and wipes his own eyes. “Agreed.”

 

He turns to the Captain. “Thank you, Gertrude, for everything you’ve done for me. My stay has been wonderful.”

 

“Come back soon,” she demands, and hugs him too, in a shocking move. “Stay safe,” she says into his hair, and then seems to collect herself, a long second too late, but the crew will do as they always do and pretend not to see when she’s not being impartial and Captainly.

 

Polonius pokes his head up from behind her. “Good luck with the, er, book and all! And safe travels to, um, well, I must admit I was rather lost by things, but I wish you the very best, dear boy!”

 

“Thank you,” Horatio accepts gracefully.

 

He extricates himself from the cluster and heads for the elevator; Hamlet pushes away from the wall where he’d been leaning and follows him in. Horatio waves before the doors shut, and then it’s just the two of them.

 

“I apologise for all of them, unreservedly,” Hamlet says.

 

“It was lovely,” Horatio sighs. “Except Polonius calling me ‘dear boy’, but I can’t really explain why I’m not a boy without explaining I’m an alien.”

 

“He’d tell the whole quadrant, immediately, so better not.”

 

Hamlet grins over at Horatio, and tries to push down the huge crushing sadness inside him that this is their final elevator ride together. Their final anything.

 

_No it’s not, you drama queen._

 

The doors open and they make their way to the Transporter Room.

 

Horatio slips his hand into Hamlet’s as they walk.

 

“I’ll be back soon, remember,” he says. “I’ll get to Atria and meet you on the way back.”

 

“Mm.”

 

“And I’ll holo you every day. You’ll be sick of me in a month.”

 

Hamlet laughs. “Doubt it.”

 

“And after this you can take a sabbatical, come and stay with me.”

 

“I’d like that.”

 

“I’d like it too.”

 

Without bothering with a conversational connector, he adds, “I love you, Hamlet.” Like a damn warning.

 

“Love you too,” Hamlet replies faux-casually, and suddenly they’re at Transport and all pretence of casual goes out the window.

 

He pulls Horatio in for a last, very lingering kiss. He doesn’t want to let go.

 

“Miss you already,” he mumbles.

 

“Seven months,” Horatio whispers back.

 

“Seven months. It’ll fly.”

 

Horatio settles onto the Transport pad and Hamlet fights himself not to run up and join him. Seven months. Easy. Just add it to the mantra.

 

“See you on the flip side,” Horatio grins, using one of Hamlet’s old phrases. Hamlet smiles ear to ear, and raises a hand to wave, and then Horatio is fizzling out onto Blackdog below, and the space where he was is just air again.

 

His personal comm beeps.

 

“Stop staring at nothing and get back to work,” Horatio’s disembodied voice tells him, and Hamlet laughs.

 

He brings the comm up to his face. “Shut up, babe.”


End file.
